The Thursday! Newsletter 2-14: Of Wandering and Making Maps
Volume 2, Issue 14
I have walked around our small apartment four times now.
Four laps from the living room where my laptop sits on a tray table in front of the couch, to the spare bedroom that is slowly becoming a library or sitting room, to the kitchen where I move one glass from the counter to the sink. Four laps. Fifteen minutes. Each time, I think about sitting back down at my laptop to write this essay, but I don't.
I don't have anything to write. I have no advice for you, no insight into the creative life, nothing inspirational to say about life. I do have a fair basket full of anxieties and anxieties about anxieties, not the least of which is this essay. There is pressure -- all originating from the vicinity of my own heart -- to be wonderful for you. Every day I see writers and artists and marketers hawking their newsletters. They want your attention, badly. But I have it, here and now. You are listening to me and not to any of them. That is no small thing and I don't want to treat it lightly. Trust is a big deal these days. Look around at all the media companies that spent decades building it only to trade it all in for a promise of clicks and ratings and votes for their favorite candidates and very large paydays when contract time came around every couple or three years. I don't have any of that. I have myself and the stuff I write.
And you. I have you. And I don't want you to regret your time here.
So I pace around the apartment searching for something good to say to you and each time I make a circuit, I know I don't have it. Still, the essay beckons so here I am, without much cleverness nor wisdom but a ton of honestly about how little I know about what I'm doing with my own art nor with the trust you've given me.
That may the best thing I can offer right now, though. Uncertainty is the only certainty. You don't get a map of the world when you start living in it. You don't even get one after you've gone halfway through. Each of us draws our own maps as we go and each looks quite different because each looks backwards at the path we've traveled and what we have seen on either side. Maybe we sketch in a little bit as we cross paths with someone else. We might scribble "Here there probably be dragons but maybe not. Remember to check later." on a margin or draw little arrows that point to where we met another person whose path might intersect ours a bit farther along.
My map today looks a bit like one of those old Family Circus comics. I wandered around a bit like Jeffy, and that's okay. I drank an iced coffee and ate some chicken tenders and got caught up on some shows I had recoded on the DVR. I wandered around the apartment and worried about whether you'd all hate me an unsubscribe or, worse, you'd not even bother to open my e-mail. Eventually, I got here and you came with me, which makes me awfully glad. It's nice not to be alone in my wandering. It's nice to have your company. I'm glad you don't mind I'm an old guy in a young person's game. I'm glad you don't mind my weird wanderings.
Mostly, I'm glad to give you something you can use when you're done reading Thursday! Did that happen today? I think it might have. You do have that map you've been drawing since the day you were born. Maybe you can put down some new territory?
That sounds like a heck of a think to do today. I mapped out my apartment and maybe a little bit of my future ambition. How about you? Where did you wander?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
What I Wrote Last Week
"Illimitably" is a poem inspired by a favorite poet.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
One Last Thing
This is where I ask you to help me out. I can't share Thursday! nearly as well as you can so if you know someone who might like what we have here, forward this along or show them the archives.
You can also buy or share my cool book, give it a solid review, or get an autographed copy (ask and I'll tell you how!).
If you're seeing Thursday! for the first time, HI! I'm glad to meet you. If you want more, subscribe right here.
As always, you can always talk back to me by hitting the reply button! I can't promise I'll always answer back, because I'm quite forgetful, but I'll read everything you send.