Message in a Bottle—Are You Out There?

There’s an old Twilight Zone episode called “Where Is Everybody?”, the very first episode of The Twilight Zone, originally aired October 2, 1959. It's about a man who wakes up to find he’s the last person on earth. He wanders through empty streets in a daze, trying to understand what happened. What made him different? Why is he still here when everyone else is gone?

Silhouette of woman looking out over a red sea.

I’ve felt that way my entire life: an outsider wandering through a world that seems perfectly content to blend itself into sameness. Everywhere I look, I see assimilation: on social media, in churches, in institutions across the globe. People becoming like each other to fit in, smoothing out their edges until nothing unique remains. I’ve never understood how they do it.

I believe there was a time when we weren’t expected to dissolve ourselves to belong. A time when originality wasn’t a liability. When a person’s uniqueness was something to be honored. I long for that bygone era.

Because things have gotten bad. We’ve allowed ourselves to be categorized and dissected, attribute by attribute, until we’re nothing more than data points. It makes us easier to market to, easier to sell to, easier to predict. And humanity has gone along with it—happily, willingly.

I haven’t read a book that made me cry in years. I know why. It’s no longer fashionable—or even acceptable—for an author to pour their soul into their stories. Of course there are authors who still write with depth and emotional honesty, but they’re increasingly rare, and rarely celebrated. The industry standard is to stamp out originality in popular fiction. Distinct voices are becoming relics, most of them from the pre‑Y2K era.

Books are written for profit now. Anyone can write one, because writing has been reduced to a skill set: construct sentences, follow trends, mimic the market. Nothing is created without the intent of making someone richer. If I’m wrong, please tell me. But I can’t find evidence to the contrary.

So, here’s the conundrum: What do you do when you’re a natural creator living in a world that has no use for you?

Man's black boot crushing a red heart on sidewalk.

Many people start out creative. They begin with heart, with passion, with something to say. But they quickly discover that authenticity is no longer a competitive advantage. So they sell out. They adapt. They make the system work for them. That’s the price of success now. But should it be?

Like many other creators, I’m also a trauma survivor. My life is colored with deep truths and dark things. My trauma informs my writing, and it’s no fun to be triggered by your own stories. But I write them anyway.

That’s why I’m starting this series. I’m calling it “Message in a Bottle” because I truly feel shipwrecked—lost at sea, a survivor in a world that no longer sends search and rescue. I feel like that man in the Twilight Zone episode, endlessly doomscrolling through social media, searching for signs of life.

I want to explore storytelling with purpose. None of us were there to witness it, but there was a time when stories were moral imperatives, cautionary tales, mirrors held up to the human condition. I think of myths like King Midas, who learned the hard way that money isn’t everything.

Why can’t we have some of that again? Why must money reign supreme?

So many authors claim they would write regardless of profit, and I want to believe them. I really do. But the moment someone admits they’re writing from emotional experience, they’re dismissed. Their stories can’t possibly be good if they’re—gasp—written from the heart.

GIF of a penguin chanting "AI is here"

And now AI is here. It’s going to put a lot of people out of work, and many of those people will be authors. AI will write books faster, cheaper, and just as well as someone writing solely for profit. This is why the billionaires know it can replace us: we’ve been trained to assimilate, to lose our authenticity, and we obliged.

And if you’re like me—throwing out messages, hoping to be heard—talk to me and I’ll talk to you.

Let’s make this a thing. Let’s support creators of genuine self‑expression until it becomes a viral trend. It’s the reason I’m still here, still writing, still holding out hope.

Because I believe it can be done.

And I believe it must be done.