I spent much of the last couple days setting up a Substack.

That may not sound like much, but for a visually impaired guy like me, it was far from trivial.

I have a pretty technical background, but these days even simple technology tasks can test my skills, not to mention my patience. Most interfaces are designed for how things look, not how they’re navigated. That makes sense. The vast majority of people don’t have vision issues. And for most of my life, neither did I. Until I did.

But this story isn’t really about accessibility, or even vision loss.

I worked through it. Page by page. Step by step. I even set up a custom domain, writing.chrismonnette.com, tied back to my website.

When I finished, and everything was working the way it should, I sat back and looked at it. I felt good. Better than I expected.

It’s a good start, I thought.

Later, I told my wife about it. I walked her through everything I’d done, all the small hurdles along the way, how I had navigated them. The pride of the accomplishment was almost certainly not lost on the person who knows me best, and whose opinion matters most.

“That’s great, baby,” she said. “Good job.”

Then she asked, “Why did you do that?”

I laughed. “Well, because—”

And that was as far as I got.

This isn’t really a story about Substack, though I suspect, and hope, it’s a good platform.

I woke up the next morning with her question still sitting there. As I usually do, I fed the dog, then sat down on the cushion to meditate.

I picked up my phone to set a thirty-minute timer. One notification sat on the home screen.

Substack.

Not all of my meditation sessions are as focused as I’d like.

This was one of them.

Afterward, I sat with my coffee, my wife’s question still echoing in my mind.

I already have a website. It’s been there for years. It holds a lot of what I’ve written, some of it I’m proud of, some of it feels like it matters. But I didn’t have a plan for Substack. Just, why not.

That’s not like me. At least not anymore. I try not to jump into things without thinking them through. This time I did, and now I find myself trying to reverse engineer the decision.

The truth is, my website has a lot of content. Far more content than readers. And if I’m being honest, that’s the part that’s pushing me.

But why?

The site was never meant to be a commercial endeavor itself. It started as a way to promote my memoir, Seeing Clearly, but over time it evolved into something I kept returning to, even as I lost any clear sense of what it was for. So I started trying to answer the question.

Why did I do this?

At first, the answers came easily. Substack is a better distribution platform. That’s what it’s built for. It reaches people in a way my website never has. It makes engagement easier, more direct.

All of that is true, but it didn’t feel like the real answer.

Because the truth is, I already have a place for my writing.

So I asked a different question. Am I afraid of losing the content, or am I afraid no one will ever see it?

Or is it something else entirely?

Maybe I want it to be there, out in the world, as proof. Proof that I’ve thought about things. That I’ve written things that matter. That I’ve done something with my time.

That idea is harder to sit with.

But it’s also closer to the truth.

I told myself it was part of the job. That this is what writers do.

Maybe that’s true.

But there’s something underneath that.

Something quieter, and a little less comfortable to admit.

I like the idea that something I write might land with someone. That it might matter.

And if I’m honest, I like being read.

And that’s where it starts to turn into something else.

A need.

That’s when the email came.

Long. Personal. Full of details about my background. My writing. My life. It reflected my own words back to me in a way that felt almost too precise. And for a moment, I was hooked.

I felt seen.

Then I looked a little closer.

The details were all surface level. Pulled from things I’ve already put out into the world. Rearranged. Reflected back.

I checked the email address. A made-up name at gmail.com.

And I laughed.

What stayed with me wasn’t the email itself. It was how easily it worked. How quickly it pulled me in.

I don’t think that I am a particularly unique person. Like everyone else, I have wants and needs. Some I am aware of. Others operate at a level just below the surface. Cravings that pull me into things, long before I realize what is happening.

I didn’t take the bait with the email. But I am thankful to the sender, whoever he, she, or it was, because it shined a light on the craving.

So I’m launching on Substack.

Not because I’ve figured it all out. Not because I’ve found some pure reason to write or share. If anything, the opposite. I can see the pull for what it is, the part of me that wants to be read, to be seen, to know it matters.

That’s there. It probably always will be.

But underneath all of that, something simpler remains.

I write because I enjoy it. Because it teaches me something I don’t see until I put the words down. Because every now and then it helps me understand my own mind a little more clearly.

So I’ll keep writing. I’ll share it here, and wherever else makes sense.

Not to chase validation. But not pretending that pull doesn’t exist either.

Just writing, and paying attention to what comes with it.

So if any of this resonated, or if you’re as curious as I am, I’d love to have you follow along.

Subscribe now

After catching up with a dear friend and former colleague this morning, I found myself thinking about the doors we walk through in our lives.

Some are obvious. The big ones we spend hours, days, maybe years turning over before we finally step through. Others feel small at the time. Decisions we make quickly, almost without thinking.

My life is full of them.

Not all of them felt like the right choice. Some were painful. Others barely registered when I made them, only to realize later how much they had changed my life in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

They weren’t doors.

They were turnstiles.

Once you step through, there’s no going back the way you came. The path forward is changed, whether you like it or not.

Not just the big ones. Even the small, forgettable ones.

I used to argue with that. I believed I could undo things. That if I tried hard enough, I could put things back the way they were.

Get the toothpaste back in the tube.

Now, in the back half of my sixties, I see it differently.

The greater harm is in trying to go back.

The very nature of a turnstile is that it forces a choice. And once you move through it, another one is already in front of you.

Stay where you are, or move forward.

There were times I couldn’t get through that next one fast enough.

One of them led me to ask questions I had been avoiding for years.

It led me to my wife, Marilyn.

To therapy.

To writing.

To a life I wouldn’t trade with anyone.

And still, I spent years regretting that first painful turnstile.

The thing about regret is that it can be a teacher, or it can be a master.

Clearly, the harm we cause others isn’t something to ignore or write off. Once we see it, the responsibility is to stop, and then do what we can to repair it.

But we also have to face this: the person we harmed can’t go back any more than we can undo what we did.

I can’t begin to count the number of times a memory from my past has stopped me cold. Sometimes it’s something small. A photo. A song. And suddenly I’m there again. Remembering. Regretting.

There comes a point when there’s only one choice left.

To forgive ourselves.

And that just might be the hardest turnstile of all to step through. But what option do we really have?

As I caught up with my friend this morning, our conversation turned to writing, and I found myself smiling.

She was the one who sent me a link to a class at Lighthouse Writers in Boulder. Introduction to Novels and Memoirs.

I remember laughing.

Yeah, right.

I almost didn’t step through that one.

But I did

.

I wrote this after listening to Lights On. It started as a reflection on my vision, but it pulled me into a much bigger question—what it is we’re actually experiencing in the first place.

Since losing part of my vision, I’ve become strangely more aware of what I can’t see, what’s missing, distorted, or invented by my brain to fill in the gaps. Visual hallucinations are now part of my life. I’ve seen a city skyline, tall buildings stretching across a photograph of the backcountry, where there wasn’t a piece of rebar for miles. A dog lying on the floor, where there was only a rug with an odd geometric pattern. My own dog, Skye, curled beside me on the couch.

Most of the time, it’s entertaining. Sometimes, it’s frustrating, especially when I’m trying to get something done. But every time it happens, it’s enlightening. I find myself asking: What else is my mind lying to me about?

I guess lying is perhaps too strong a word. It suggests intent. My brain isn’t trying to deceive me; it’s just doing its best with the limited visual data that makes it past my ravaged maculas, through my visual cortex, and into awareness. That’s where the inaccuracy takes shape.

I picture a scene from Inside Out, with a new character—Illusion—who keeps hijacking the projector, making me “see” things that aren’t really there, while Joy, Fear, and Disgust shout from the control panel, “Stop! That’s all wrong!”

Recently, I listened to Annaka Harris’ audiobook Lights On. It’s a deep dive into consciousness. I wouldn’t call it a casual listen, at least not for me. It’s probably easier if you have a background in neuroscience or philosophy. Both would help. That said, she does a remarkable job of summarizing difficult ideas in a very accessible way.

The central question she explores is whether consciousness is fundamental to the universe or simply an emergent property of complex biological systems.

It took me a minute to make sense of that question the first time I heard it, so let me add a bit more context.

Most of science treats consciousness as emergent: something that arises when a system becomes complex enough, like a human brain.

For me, it helps to think about it like this. If consciousness is emergent, it only materializes when an organism reaches a certain level of development, then the lights come on. Think of a human versus a rock. Both are made from the same limited set of atoms: just 118 known elements on the periodic table. But something about the way those atoms are arranged in a human brain gives rise to awareness, while a rock remains unaware.

If consciousness is emergent, it’s the arrangement that matters. But if it’s fundamental, then there’s a measure of consciousness in all matter. Think, for example, of the difference between a human and a worm. The worm may only be aware of pressure as it slides across the ground. It doesn’t worry about money or whether its kids can go to college. Take that down several more steps to a rock, and maybe there’s a tiny spark of consciousness there too. Maybe not something we can relate to, but something nonetheless.

It’s a bold idea, for sure. But it does beg the question: If consciousness is emergent, where do the lights come on? Just with humans? It’s clear to me that my dog Skye feels joy, sadness, and pain. What about a hamster? A butterfly? An ant? A rock?

Where, exactly, is the line where the lights come on and we say there is a level of consciousness?

That’s the question Lights On is exploring. Harris leans toward the idea that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe. In my mind, I think of it like the electrical charge of an electron, something basic and built-in, not constructed.

If that’s true, then consciousness isn’t something the brain produces, it’s something the brain taps into. It’s a striking idea, but no stranger than the notion that time itself bends and stretches, as Einstein’s theory of relativity explained, and science has since confirmed.

Okay, so that’s a lot to absorb. I hope you’ve stuck with me this far, because here’s where it gets interesting.

Harris’ final words in her audiobook made me do a double take. I played them back two or three times to make sure I understood what she was saying. I even took a moment to capture them in my journal.

Not because I was certain she was right, or because it wasn’t a logical conclusion to the argument she made, but because of the implications and the questions it opened in my mind.

“Imagine,” she said, “we live in a world where there is no matter. All there is, is consciousness. The world that is constructed in that consciousness, the physical world we all see and feel every day, is just an awareness within that consciousness. It’s not real.”

Imagine the ocean. Each of us is like a single wave: distinct in shape, direction, and energy, yet still part of the same vast body of water. We rise, we crest, we fall. And while we appear separate for a moment, we are never anything but ocean. Each wave is shaped by the others. A wave cannot exist outside the water, and it is always changing, always evolving. Eventually, the wave disappears into stillness, but the water that made the wave remains.

What if Harris is right?

What if there is no physical world at all, only a boundless awareness, like an ocean, and we are nothing more than waves rising and falling within it? What if everything we see, touch, and believe to be real is simply experience, unfolding inside that vast and silent field of consciousness?

Could it be that the presence we’ve called God for thousands of years is not separate from us at all, but this very awareness, ever-present, formless, and indivisible?

Could consciousness itself be the fundamental nature of everything, the hidden thread science has been chasing, the essence beneath all matter and mind?

Or is it something more mysterious still?

Two truths converging.

God and science, not rivals but reflections.

A single explanation, hiding in plain sight.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: No, I’m not under the influence of any mind-altering drug. At least not as I write this.

And no, I’m not claiming this as some ultimate truth.

To be clear, I’m not so arrogant as to say I know the truth of the universe.

But I am someone who believes deeply in asking questions, even the ones that might not have answers.

Let me return to where I started. I know my brain plays tricks on me. Not only is that well supported by neuroscience, I see it in my life every day.

So if that’s true, what’s wrong with asking questions that strike directly at the heart of everything I’ve always believed?

What if the most honest way to live isn’t to be certain, but to stay curious?

That doesn’t mean abandoning science or faith. It means refusing to settle for either as a complete explanation. A universal consciousness might sound like heresy to a scientist and like vagueness to a theologian. But to someone like me, living between vision and imagination, reason and mystery, it feels like a door that begs to be opened.

I’ve come to believe that to live fully is to ask questions, especially the unanswerable ones.

Because if we don’t, how do we know we’re not living a lie?