Bathroom cave art.
When I find myself doing too much thinking about writing, about the idea of writing, it only seems to get that much harder to start, like trying to crank over an old engine that's sat for the whole winter. And then I do sit down to do it, and it's like going for a walk under trees and stepping into those long thin threads of silk, and pulling them out of my mouth and my eyes. Invisible, maybe slowing my stride a little just because they annoy me. But not enough to make you stop.
Today I think about the people who set the rules when it comes to copywriting and writing, the ones who say you can't write a wall of text because no one will read what's on a wall. But doesn't it matter what's on the wall to begin with? What if you see the number 42? What if you find out that Bobby loves Suzy 4 ever? What if you see a piece of bathroom cave art depicting an object longer than it is wide?
Maybe the lines here are getting blurry, the ones between copy and content. I'm going to take a left turn now and talk about flying, because it dawned on me; I'm not the only one who got into it because of how it feels to fly.
20 years old; I think I was about that when I pushed the throttle all the way forward in a Cessna 152, registration N5357P in Portland, Maine. It was a sunny day and my instructor John Ingalls was in the right seat. Somewhere around 55 knots he told me to add some back pressure on the yoke and a moment later I felt the wheels leave the ground and the wing come alive and my ass was suspended in a piece of flying aluminum and I was 12 years old again or maybe 4. I'd found what I wanted to do. I'm not the only one or the first to feel that coming alive feeling in flight.
Transforming or waking up. I can't make up my mind what's happening to us when we realize we're part of a flying machine. It's like we have bird circuits in our brains, hidden somewhere near the fast food circuits and the dancing circuits and the circuits that like shiny things.
Another wall, another day.
I've heard Laura Belgray and other writers I admire talking about the idea of 'morning pages,' and whatever you call them, whatever discipline you need to put them out, what a worthy way to get into the habit of paying attention. As for spilling them on LinkedIn? Maybe that's overkill, maybe not. Maybe it's a way to overcome the fear of looking mediocre, because the practice is the reward, and someone has to feed the algorithms every day or else they ignore you and then... well... you could also write your morning pages in a cabin by a lake with a pen and a notebook and a black wood stove in the corner.
Come to think of it, that sounds pretty good.
Talk more later/Jesse