Chasing Truth in a World That's Half Dream, Half Fire
You ever stumble on a nugget of intel that flips the script on everything you thought you knew? That's what hit me this afternoon, courtesy of Andrew Bustamante—a former CIA operative with eyes that have seen more shadows than most of us chase sunlight. He drops this bomb: Jeffrey Epstein?
Not the sleek Mossad operative or the CIA's pet project we all whispered about in those late-night Reddit rabbit holes. No, according to Bustamante, Epstein could have been an FBI informant. A fed's whisperer in the dark, trading secrets for a leash that never quite snapped.
First time I've heard it laid out like that. Clean. Unvarnished. And damn if it doesn't make the puzzle pieces click in a whole new way. I've long nursed this gut feeling that Epstein's "suicide" was the world's laziest magic trick—poof, gone, but the air still hums with his echo. Is he really dead? Or sipping piña coladas on some uncharted atoll, trading passports like poker chips? The powers that be had every reason to bury him deep. Hell, they'd dig a grave for anyone who knew too much about their games. And me? Do I trust the U.S. government?
Hell no.
I've danced too close to the flame. Pissed off the wrong suits. Peeked behind curtains that weren't meant for prying eyes. But here's the kicker: In a hall of mirrors like this, what's real? Who's pulling the strings—the puppeteers or the ghosts they can't quite exorcise? It's enough to make you question if we're even in 2025. Feels more like 2005 some days, doesn't it? That endless loop of post-9/11 paranoia, tech booms masking the busts, and truth slipping through fingers like sand.
Or maybe that's the point. The eternal question: What is true? What isn't? What actually happened in that Manhattan cell, or on that island, or in the boardrooms where deals get inked in invisible ink? To chase truth isn't just to dig—it's to love the dig. To hurl yourself into the unknown with arms wide, willing to create history from the shards.
And let me tell you, picking up a pen? That's the ultimate hack. Writing stuff down doesn't just capture the now—it catapults you forward. You're a time traveler, baby, etching blueprints for tomorrows you'll never see but everyone else will live. One of the greatest skills humanity's got. Hands down.
So here we are. This time tomorrow, I'll be wheels-down in Winnipeg, that gritty prairie heartbeat pulsing with possibility. A fun weekend stretches out like a blank canvas—friends, laughter, the kind of chaos that feels like freedom. I'm hungry for it. Starving for the shift, the fresh lens that turns the ordinary into oracle. Change isn't coming; it's crashing the party, and I'm RSVPing with a grin.
But damn, if the tears aren't welling up as I type this. Is it the song humming in my headphones—some soul-stirring indie track that's equal parts ache and anthem? Or Raj packing boxes for Ottawa, that quiet exodus of a brother slipping the horizon? Probably all of it. The variables colliding like stars in a fever dream.
Do I have the life I want right now? Straight up: No. It's a patchwork quilt of "almosts" and "not yets." But have I clawed my way forward in the last year? Abso-fucking-lutely. I've stumbled hard. Spent most of it untethered.
Failed spectacularly, over and over, like a glitchy algorithm rewriting its own code. Remember Steven Bartlett? That sharp black shirted wizard of podcasts and empires? He's got a whole failure department on his team. A squad dedicated to dissecting flops, mining them for gold. Maybe that's been my gig this year. Chief Failure Officer. Just sifting through the wreckage to spotlight what I don't want. The jobs that choke, the cities that constrict, the versions of me that dim instead of ignite.
And in that sifting? A quiet revolution. To go all in on yourself. No half-measures, no escape hatches. To swallow the bitter pill of acceptance, chase it with forgiveness like it's the finest whiskey. To love yourself—not in some Hallmark haze, but raw, relentless, like oxygen to a drowning man. And in loving yourself? You crack open the floodgates for everyone else.
That's the alchemy, isn't it? To love others without the ledger. To show up present, eyes locked, heart radar pinging the hidden hurts. Because let's be real: We're all carrying shrapnel. You, me, the barista who smiles too tight, the stranger scrolling feeds at 3 a.m. This hurting?
It's the human tax we all pay. The grit that polishes us. But it's not the endgame. It's the setup for evolution. For breaking free from the scripts we didn't write. For rippling out impact like stones in a still pond—altering trajectories we might never witness.
Peel back the layers, and life's just energy. Pulsing, electric, a grand cosmic jam session where we're all improvising on the same riff. It's a dream, yeah—one we're dreaming wide awake. Fleeting as fog, fierce as fire.
So here's my manifesto, scrawled in the margins of midnight: Be free. Dive headlong into creation, fingers flying across keys or clay or canvas. Be willing to love—the messy, the mundane, the miracles disguised as mishaps. Know that life isn't happening to you; it's happening for you. A relentless coach, whispering, "Again. Stronger."
Cultivate that creative spark until it blazes. Hug patience like an old friend who's seen you through storms. Keep betting on yourself—stack those chips high, play the long game. And love. God, love. Love until it echoes, love until it evolves you, love until the world's a little less jagged. This is the game. Infinite rounds, boundless board. Into infinity and beyond.
Connect... Gordon GordonBufton@Proton.me @GordonBufton