The Signal Fire

I talk a lot about signals in the dark. I don't talk as much about the nights when I can't see them myself.

Sometimes I get lost in the numbers, the metrics, the engagement.

And I think that happens because I am often lost in a vision, too.

A vision of what some tiny, stubborn part of me still believes is possible. A future that is stable, more fulfilling and more meaningful. A life built around creating things that matter, with people who care about making them.

And when the numbers don’t seem to move, I get frustrated. I feel the stagnation and the hopelessness. I start wondering whether all the work I’ve poured into the things I’ve created here is leading anywhere at all.

Whether the whole vision is just a pipe dream. A folly.

And there is another part of this I don’t talk about as often.

I live with major depressive disorder, and that complicates these moments considerably. Depression has a remarkable ability to collapse your field of vision. A temporary frustration becomes evidence of permanent failure. A slow week becomes stagnation and uncertainty about the future becomes certainty that there isn’t one worth reaching.

It makes it very easy to miss the forest for the trees.

And I know this about myself. Intellectually, I can recognize it while it’s happening. That doesn’t necessarily make the trees look any smaller. Sometimes I have to deliberately pull the camera back. And when I do, I realize I’ve been staring so closely at numbers on a screen that I’ve somehow overlooked the actual people those numbers represent.

And that's when I remember: the vision was never really just about me.

Because when I imagine something stable, meaningful, fulfilling, and genuinely good, what I actually see is people.

A network. A coalition. A loose cooperative of creative, thoughtful, strange, brilliant people who want to make things together. Who want to challenge each other and change themselves. And maybe, in whatever small ways we can, change the world around us.

And then I look around and realize:

That network is already being built.

Piece by piece. Person by person.

Not entirely through intention, but through intuition. People finding one another because something resonates. Because one signal catches another somewhere in the rolling static.

That kind of building is slow.

It takes time because it doesn’t fully know what it is yet. It grows in directions nobody planned. Connections form and ideas cross-pollinate. People introduce people, and something that began as a handful of scattered individuals gradually becomes something with shape.

And maybe eventually that shape becomes more deliberate.

I’m not talking about another engagement circle, or a collection of people obligated to like and repost one another’s work. I’m talking about something much bigger and more useful than that.

What I see is a cooperative in the oldest sense of the word: people with different skills, experiences and resources helping one another build things none of us could build alone.

Writers finding musicians, artists finding storytellers, researchers finding creators who can translate an idea into something people can feel. People sharing equipment, knowledge, audiences, opportunities and, when possible, resources. Not because everyone owes everyone else something, but because we recognize something worthwhile in what another person is trying to make.

Less networking in the corporate sense.

More building a weird little civilization.

I know getting lost in the vision is part of what gets me into trouble. But I think sometimes it’s worth getting lost on purpose, wandering as far into the possibility as my mind will let me go. And if I let myself wander far enough, the grandest version of this doesn’t remain entirely online.

Maybe someday there is an actual place.

A plot of land somewhere. A workshop. A studio. A library. Recording rooms. Editing stations. A table where somebody is writing a story while somebody else is soldering something strange ten feet away. A room where a musician is recording something for a filmmaker they met through someone who came there to work on a completely unrelated project.

A place people can come when they need to make something, learn something, teach something, or simply be around other people who haven’t given up on the idea that creating is important, that for some of us, creating is part of what makes life worth living.

Maybe residencies someday. Workshops and performances. Small productions and collaborative projects. A place where someone with an idea but no resources can walk through the door and find people who know how to help make it real.

That’s the absurdly ambitious version.

But most things that eventually exist begin as something slightly absurd that a few people refused to stop imagining.

And maybe that’s the part worth remembering: the building isn’t the beginning. The beginning is the signal. People finding one another in the noise, recognizing something familiar, and deciding to stick around long enough to see what might grow from it.

And that part isn’t hypothetical. It’s already happening.

So if you’re wondering whether you’re part of it, you likely are.

I look around at the people I’ve met here and see some of the most intelligent, creative, thoughtful people I’ve ever known. An incredible wealth of knowledge, experience, imagination, and perspective.

I need to keep reminding myself:

This isn’t going to happen overnight.

And I’ll never get there alone.

So if you’re feeling this too, look out into the dark.

If you can see the signal fire, move toward it.

I’ll see you there.

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© 2025 Joel L. All rights reserved.

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Thanks for reading. - Joel L.

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