Journal – Trance Blackman

Here you’ll find my philosophical meanderings in the form of articles, essays, and occasional poetry. My interests and curiosities are broad, but the central focus remains the pursuit of what is authentic, real, and true.

Lux et veritas

Still Lingering

18 August 2026 ~ 4 minute read

There are ideas we encounter that seem to explain everything for a time. They give shape to questions we’ve carried for years, offer language for things we’ve sensed but couldn’t articulate, or open doors into entirely new ways of seeing. But even the most compelling idea can become another place to stop moving. What once expanded us can eventually become another boundary if we become too attached to it.

The Reality We Inherited

15 August 2026 ~ 8 minute read

There is a peculiar exhaustion that comes from maintaining a reality some deeper part of you no longer believes. You can learn to live with the contradictions, explain away the inconsistencies, and keep moving through the machinery of everyday life, but the questions remain. Perhaps the greater discomfort isn’t discovering that something you believed was untrue. Perhaps it’s realizing how much of yourself you invested in believing it.

You Are Living Your Dream Life

15 August 2026 ~ 2 minute read

We spend so much of our lives trying to arrive somewhere other than where we are. We measure the present against what we remember, what we expected, or what we imagine might yet come, rarely considering that nothing essential has gone missing in the meantime. Perhaps the invitation was never to perfect the circumstances of our lives, but to become present enough to recognize what has been unfolding through them all along.

Cancer: The Story Beneath the Disease

15 August 2026 ~ 5 minute read

Perhaps the most difficult thing to reconcile when confronting illness, especially cancer, is the possibility that we have misunderstood not only disease, but ourselves. We have inherited countless ideas about what the body is, what it is capable of, what threatens it, and where its authority ultimately resides. Yet beneath those accumulated narratives is something quieter and considerably older: an intelligence that has accompanied us from the beginning, asking very little except that we stop long enough to remember it.

Resonance Over Reach

14 August 2026 ~ 5 minute read

There comes a point when trying to reach more people begins to interfere with reaching the right people. What we create, discover, and offer in earnest does not need to resonate with everyone, nor should we expect it to. There is a certain freedom in recognizing that our task may simply be to put forth what feels true and worthwhile, as clearly and authentically as we can, and allow those who are ready for it to find their way there.

The Machinery of Stolen Time

02 August 2026 ~ 7 minute read

We were promised that technology would return something to us. Time, freedom, ease, perhaps even a greater capacity to live. Yet somewhere between the promise and the implementation, the tools became obligations, convenience became compliance, and the hours they were meant to save disappeared into the machinery required to keep them functioning.