Since the world shut down, it's never been easier for me to write consistently. Beginning back in March, I could hole myself up in my apartment and grab ideas out of thin air, sometimes as late as Saturday morning. Even as America started to loosen up a bit more amidst worrying pockets of outbreak, I kept the publishing habit alive. This week was different. It has been the hardest week yet for me to figure out what I wanted to say.
I started to wonder if I should be sharing my thoughts at all on a weekly basis. It was a consequence of more than a couple people unsubscribing lately. I get it. Most were friends of careers past. I don't blame them for not needing another voice in their heads. But a few more people deciding they don't need my thoughts made me wonder if we all needed a bit of space. After all, here I am writing about my writing process. Do you really need this?
Maybe you're curious. I know I am. That's why I write. To understand. To explore. But the world never stops delivering, and sometimes that can cause more harm than good. Information is so instantaneous it almost sucks the fun out of it. There is no time left to wonder and see where our weirdest thoughts might go.
Plus, to know it all doesn't mean we understand it all. Having the world in our hands does not mean it makes sense in our minds. UC San Diego professor Dr. Barbara Oakley highlights some of these "Illusions of Competence":
Seeing or reading an argument doesn't mean you understand it or how to get to it.
Googling tricks your brain into thinking you have the information in your head.
Spending a lot of time with material doesn't mean you understand it.
But with a world moving at breakneck speed, we crave certainty more than ever. We want someone to box up the justification for our feelings with statistics and zingers and a bow on top.
What we really need is exactly what we don't get - quiet and time and space. Maybe there is such a thing as too much, but we're only stretched in a thousand directions because think we need to be. We make bold statements of certainty because that's what we expect.
What if it was our job to discover things we didn't know? And what if all the good stuff took time? What would we do then?
I'm trying to find out.
See ya next week. Maybe.
With that being said, here are some videos that gave me food for thought:
Nathaniel Drew is probably the reason I recently started thinking about curiosity as a concept. He considers it the key to a more interesting life. I have to agree.
Need some laughs? Billy on the Street never disappoints. In this clip, he drags around Lin-Manuel Miranda and it's adorable.
In this clip, author/artist Austin Kleon talks about his inspiration, Corita Kent (video).
Until next time...