#34 / Rush Job
Hey everyone,
Welcome to November! Goodbye to daylight savings time. Welcome, 4:30 PM darkness. Goodbye to... nope, I'm not going to jinx it.
A friend asked me some provocative questions about my experience so far writing these emails. The friend is Nick B., who also provided me with last week’s McCullough article. Don’t get a big head, Nick!
Actually, Nick’s own newsletter was the major impetus for me starting this one. He consistently puts out a thorough and thoughtful collection of work every week (err, no pressure though) and he deftly interweaves life updates with big thinking on psychology and culture. That’s been inspiring, and Nick’s personal support has been invaluable. I think if you like my stuff, you’d like his, too, and you can sign up to get it on his website.
Here are my answers to Nick's questions.
What do you get out of it?
The biggest thing is connection. I’m not keen on social media, have basically been AWOL from Facebook for years (a decision I’m still quite happy with, despite the drawbacks), and am not the best at keeping up with people via calls and texts. But I want to be in touch with the people I care about most—that's you—and I thought this would be a good way to do that. It doesn’t replace any of the above methods, but it’s a nice addition that comes with some other benefits.
One of those benefits is that it improves my writing. I enjoy my craft, and I want to get better at it. By committing to mailing something out once a week, I can trust that my skills will naturally grow with time, even if I don’t deliberately try to write something good (but of course, I do try). This is a safe place for me to experiment: I value you, and thus I value your time, and I don’t want to send you something that might waste that time; on the other hand, I know that this is all in fun, and you’re willing to give me a chance to take risks. I’m not sure I’ve taken many risks yet, but I feel secure in knowing I’ve got room to do so.
And the other major benefit is that writing is just fun. It’s fun to try to answer my own nagging life questions, questions that some of you probably also have, and it’s fun to share my impressions of my daily experiences, experiences that some of you probably also have—being useful is fun, too.
I will say, though, that not everything I get out of this feels good. I also feel some stress on the weekends when it's time to send this email out, and I especially feel stressed when I’m not excited to write, or when I’m feeling uninspired. But I write anyway, and I’m always glad I did. This stress isn’t the sort of stress that takes away the fun; it seems to be a necessary companion to the fun, which comes with doing anything difficult.
Writing—even casual writing—requires effort and thought and calmness and mental space. And it’s always easier in the moment to do an activity that does not require those things, like watching a football game or checking the news for the 19th time that day.
Even if I have a good plan for when I’m going to write that day, where I’m going to do it, and what digital hygiene I’m going to practice (turning off notifications, putting the phone in another room, etc.)—even then, it takes a bit of willpower to actually sit down and inform the Instant Gratification Monkey that I will not be indulging him this time (see the video for a hilarious introduction to this dastardly character).
And to be honest, most times I don’t have a good plan. That means it takes more than a little willpower to get started. And the longer I wait in the day, the more stress I feel about getting started, because I know it’s going to be more difficult, and require more willpower, and I’ll have less time to work.
But again, I think this is just par for the course when it comes to making long-term commitments. The joy inherent in this kind of commitment is not acute; it’s cumulative. Some days it’s just going to suck. That’s when I remind myself why I made the commitment—either that, or I just grit my teeth and power through it.
Things that feel meaningful aren’t always going to feel good. In fact, if something feels good all the time, it's probably not meaningful at all.
What have you learned since you started?
Sometimes the writing I crank out when I’m really not into it turns out to be my best writing. I don’t know exactly how that works. Maybe it’s because I give up caring about how good it is, and this actually frees me. I don't have a lot of time to fritter away over-worrying about "quality," which means that at some point in the weekend, I just have to press send. With work that nobody is waiting for, I can second-guess myself to my heart's content; with this email, if I start to feel like maybe I made the wrong choice on what to write about, too bad, it's gotta go out.
I also can’t predict what pieces are going to be more well-received than others; this is a lesson that my writer friends have also shared with me, which further encourages me to let my fingers fly and see what happens.
For the times when I feel like I can't write, it helps to start writing about why I feel like I can't write. That often turns into something juicy.
And like all my other projects, I always have more ambitions than I’m able to execute in a given week. This is another thing I’ve heard from fellow creatives. On one hand, it’s nice, because I’ve built up a backlog of ideas I can use. On the other hand, it always feels like I’m holding something back, like I’m not quite giving it everything I have. Maybe some weeks that’s true, but I think this is largely a product of internalizing external expectations.
The truth is that our capitalist, meritocratic society is never happy with the amount we produce. There’s always pressure to make more, earn more, and be more, with the implicit threat that if we don’t, someone who “deserves” it more will take our place. This ethos infects everything, even my simple email newsletter. I try to remain aware that this is what’s happening, but it’s difficult.
What sorts of things seem to resonate best with your audience?
I mean, y’all tell me (please!), but I’m going to say that it’s the introspective stuff, where I express and unpack a feeling that maybe isn’t “proper” to discuss in public, like confusion or self-doubt or even despair. I always do this to some extent, but especially in the first several issues, when we were just getting used to the reality of the pandemic and the lockdowns, I tried to be honest about what I was really feeling, knowing that we were all sharing the shock and anger and grief and bitter disappointments.
I also try not to focus too much on current events, unless what’s happening is a pandemic or a massive protest of social injustice. I’ve been mostly avoiding election talk (cheeky subject lines aside) because like you, I am getting more than enough of that elsewhere. But I certainly won’t shy away from long-term political and cultural topics; I want to explore how the eternal manifests in the moment. I hope that resonates.
Also, it turns out people like caterpillars way more than I would have guessed.
What advice would you give to someone that wants to start their own weekly email?
Don’t wait until you’re “ready.” Don’t worry too much about what you’re going to write. Come up with the one or two biggest reasons you want to do it, and hang them up somewhere you can see them.
Mood
Islands — “This Is Not a Song”
Criminally underrated band. Nick Diamonds is the main guy, and I love pretty much everything he does. When I was in college he came to prominence with a whimsical indie band called The Unicorns, and after they broke up he formed Islands. Their first album was similar to The Unicorns’ material, but by 2012 they had morphed into a low-tempo, jazzy outfit, and as much as I enjoyed their previous incarnations, I think the album A Sleep & A Forgetting is their best (Nick Diamonds agrees). It doesn’t hurt that the title name-checks one of my favorite poems.
If this is just a song
Then why do I find it so hard to move on?
Feels a crime to be crying for this long
https://open.spotify.com/track/7mbw5qVyRa4CepgQZUcq0x?si=mYrUkpz9RV--8P8gZnCPiQ
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Thanks for reading. Please take care, and write back if you can!
Love,
Aaron