The Thursday! Newsletter 1-43: Write Yourself a Note

Volume 1, Issue 43

I wonder if we creative folks write ourselves encouraging notes very often.

I ask because of a book that will come out next year, full of things Douglas Adams wrote mostly to himself. The editor pored through more than 60 boxes left in trust to St. John's College,. Cambridge, which contain notebooks, file cards, letters, and journals Adams wrote over most of his writing career. This quote, highlighted in an article about the book, got me thinking about the question I asked right at the beginning.

"Writing isn’t so bad really when you get through the worry. Forget about the worry, just press on. Don’t be embarrassed about the bad bits. Don’t strain at them. Give yourself time...
[W]riting can be good. You attack it, don’t let it attack you. You can get pleasure out of it. You can certainly do very well for yourself with it...!"

I can't tell you just how much I love the patience Adams shows himself in just a few sentences. He was, according to his friend Michael Bywater, not very fond of writing nor of writing alone. His sister wished he'd read that note to himself more often, which tells me he probably battled creative depression awfully hard for an awfully long time. Of course I can't say that or anything more for sure, so I won't. 

What I will say is that I'd like to see us write ourselves more notes of encouragement. Or paint pictures of encouragement. Or write poems of encouragement. Or sculpt encouragement totems. Whatever. 

I know. I've written about this before. Here it is again, though. Because the world stinks. It's broken and horrible and doomed to destruction. We humans are not a naturally-enlightened crew. We're mean and vicious and petty and wicked. All of us. That's who and what we are. Only be grace can we ever hope to be anything else for longer than a hot second and not nearly enough of us reach out for the grace we're offered. We get ground down. Our schedules push on us from all sides. People place demands on us that are unfair and unavoidable. 

That's what makes encouraging notes so important. We need reminders that the Giant Crapweasel O'Suck isn't always trying to kick down our door. We can carve out niches of beauty and peace. We can and should lend ourselves strength whenever we can. You will fail a lot but you will not fail always. Remind yourself of that. 

A quick baseball story because I love the game. Ted Williams was last player to bat.400 -- that's a success rate or 4 out of 10 times at-bat -- over the course of a full season. He did it in 1941. The closest anyone has come since was George Brett, who ended the 1980 season batting .390. Think about how long a stretch of years that is. The last time a baseball player succeeded well enough to get 4 hits in every 10 at-bats, we were still fighting World War II. Every batter since then, thousands of them, have done worse summer after glorious baseball summer. Yet players come back every year. They step up to the plate and take their hacks. They endure crippling slumps, heat and humidity, self-condemnation and failure in front of millions of baseball fans. 

They fail often but they do not fail forever. They crack a screaming line drive that rattles the wall in the left-center field gap and drives in the winning run. They succeed. They exult in it. Then they go back to the park the next night, high on the night before, and don't hit a ball out of the infield. That's baseball. That's also life. 

Sounds like easy pablum, doesn't it? I'm just pumping you full of sunshine and warm breezes. That's not me, though. If you've read Thursday! for more than a couple weeks (and you can read back issues), you'll know I don't like easy, breezy happy talk. Life isn't that way and, like Westley said, people who say different are selling you something. I'm not selling anything right now. But I do want to help where I can, which is where I run right back to the beginning of this essay. 

Are we creative folks writing ourselves encouraging notes? If not, why not? What's the harm in it? We know there are benefits to reminding ourselves of the good we can do and of how capable we are. We know that what we call "positive self-talk" actually works. You can talk yourself up into a better frame of mind just like you can talk yourself down into a bad one. So, why don't we leave ourselves notes like we might leave them for other people? 

I think it's because we forget we can. Most of us probably look for ways to encourage our friends and loved ones regularly. I certainly do. We forget that we are also a friend and loved one. We forget that we're allowed to give ourselves a good word just like we give our best friend one. 

Look at what Douglas Adams wrote to himself. Wouldn't you like to get a note like that on a day when you don't feel you can create your way out of a wet paper sack? You can. Write it. Now. Today. You say you're not down and you don't need a note at the moment? Write one for when you to and tuck it in an envelope labeled "Open When Creating Sucks and I Feel Like A Failure". No excuses. You're worth at least as much encouragement as you give to anyone else you love. 

Got it done? Great! Don't forget to read it a couple times. Put it where you can see it and read it.

Do it again in a couple or three more days. And let me know what you told yourself! I'd love to hear.

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What I Wrote Last Week

• "Trumpet Joe" is a little urban legend I imagined must exist in some town that is soon to know trouble.

• Did you know I sometimes write poems for Instagram? Take, for instance, this poem about a chicken, this one about a new fountain pen I bought, or this one about bears. I post some decent pictures there, too.

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One Last Thing

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