Is The Sky is Falling?

In the wee hours of the morning, I woke up gasping, the image of a well-known Asian airline’s plane falling from the sky still burned into my retinas. It was one of those terrifyingly vivid nightmares where you can feel the pressure change in the air and hear the roar of the engines failing. It was so real that my first instinct wasn’t to go to the kitchen for coffee, but to check my phone for any unfortunate news. For a split second, I actually thought I might be a psychic—that I’d just witnessed something real and tragic across time and space.

What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?

But, luckily, there were no headlines. No psychic awakening. Just the quiet, pale sliver of a promise of grey light of the approaching Finnish morning with -26⁰C temperature and the realisation that my heart was racing over a phantom.

Then, to calm my heart down I checked today’s writing prompt—“What is the thing you are most scared to do?”—and I almost wrote about my nightmare. Even as a former Cabin Crew, I am still slightly apprehensive about flying, so it would have been natural to write about the fear of heights, of mechanical failure, or of things falling from the sky. But as the adrenaline, rather slowly, faded, I realised that while a plane crash is a very terrifying thought, it isn’t my greatest fear. Gravity is just physics; it’s predictable.

The thing I am truly, bone-deep scared of is something much quieter, much more modern, and far harder to survive than a bad dream.

The Nightmare of the “Quiet Feed”

The real fear? It’s waking up and realising that my “world” is populated by avatars, not people.

Being almost 50 means I remember a time before the “scroll.” I remember when a friendship meant showing up at a door, sitting in a kitchen for hours, and knowing the messy, unedited, and unfiltered version of someone’s life. Fast forward by about two decades to 2026 to a world where people have “friends” by the hundreds, but the dynamic has shifted into something colder: passive consumption.

People track our journeys on Open Road Tales to the extent that some have called me a liar for changing my job and posting a video conveniently at about the same time. People see my latest blog post here on HaveStories, but they don’t “like” it, and they certainly don’t take their time to drop a comment. Busy? Envy? In this digital age, your creative success is often seen as a silent critique of someone else’s stagnation. People aren’t always rooting for you; sometimes, or maybe more often than not, they are just watching to see if you’ll trip.

The Fear of Ghost(ing): Are We Afraid to Ask

The thing I’m most scared to do is to actually ask my “circle” for action. Not just to “view” a video, photo, or a blog text, but to act.

I have a terrifying feeling, maybe rooted in reality, that if I reached out to my network and said, “Hey, I’ve put my soul into this book, would you buy a copy?” or “Could you support my research with a €5 coffee?”, the result wouldn’t be support. It would be ghosting, or at least a quick change of topic in the discussion.

There is a strange cultural barrier here. We are taught to be “independent” to a fault. Compare this to somewhere like Malaysia, where there is a beautiful, ingrained culture of supporting a friend’s enterprise from the word go. If a friend starts a business or writes a book there, the community rallies. Here, it feels like asking for support is seen as a “bother” or a breach of social etiquette.

What would it take to get me to do it?

It takes the realisation that I have to stop caring about the people who are only there to watch, and start looking for the people who actually want to be part of the journey.

And this is something I have, maybe unconsciously, started to do. I no longer rely on the notion that there would be a circle of people who would automatically be there to assist. Instead I treat everyone equally, as potential customers and clients, no more.

Cold? I wouldn’t say so. Realistic? More like it.

If You’re Still Here, You’re Not Just a “Scroller”

To prove my point, or rather, to prove my point to be wrong, is that you are reading these words right now. But at the same time, let’s be honest: in the world of daily writing prompts, most people are “doomscrolling.” They see a headline, give a quick, hollow “like” to be polite, and move on without reading a single word.

If you have actually made it this far—past the reflections on 90s friendships and the cultural gaps in support—I want to say thank you. You’ve given me five minutes of your time and your actual attention. In 2026, that is the most precious currency there is.

So, break the pattern. Break the envy-scroll and the ghosting culture by taking action:

The “Proof of Life” Comment: Leave a comment below. Prove to me that the algorithm hasn’t completely killed our ability to talk to one another.

Support “Buried Hearts”: If you want to see what an indie author can do when they refuse to be silenced by the gatekeepers, pick up my first novel. Buried Hearts is an LGBT love story set in the final, ash-choked days of Pompeii.
👉 Find “Buried Hearts” on Amazon Here

Fuel the “Open Road”: Help me keep the research going for my upcoming Al-Andalus novel and our YouTube channel. Every “coffee” is a message that says, “I’m not just watching; I’m supporting.”

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