Three Books to Read in 2022

The three books I’m going to recommend all indicate that I should have written this missive years ago. I am a voracious reader. I even read nonfiction, though not at nearly as quick a pace as a good beach read, which I also enjoy.

I often think I should write a book review blog because each book I read sparks something in me: an idea, a connection, some little aha! moment.

Instead I do the laundry, or brew an ill-advised second pot of coffee, or go to the grocery store, or smoke a cigarette (gross, I know. I’m outing myself a bit here).?

Not this time. Here are the books.

The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown

If you are going to read The Gifts of Imperfection and Big Magic, read them in this order, OK? It was a fluke that I just finished The Gifts of Imperfection (and I Thought It Was Just Me; more on that later) and am now reading Big Magic, but the latter is really the perfect follow-up to the former.?

After a particularly bad episode in October, I found myself wandering the self-help section in Barnes and Noble. Something had to change. To my great consternation, it seemed all of the books in the section pertained to me: Adult ADHD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, alcohol abuse, anxiety, depression… it was not my finest hour, but given my time and budget constraints, I knew I needed to settle on one.?

So I went to the Internet. Brené Brown’s website, specifically. I really wanted to dive right into shame, that bogeyman, but Brown suggests first reading The Gifts of Imperfection and then tackling I Thought It Was Just Me. So I did as I was told. I’m a rule follower if nothing else. Yes, I’m one of those Florida Panhandle pariahs who still wears a mask in stores.

So really I’m recommending both, but four books seems too lofty a charge; plus I like odd numbers.

The common thread that runs through all three of these books is letting go of fear in order to be your most authentic self, to achieve self-actualization. They are about embracing vulnerability and giving perfectionism the middle finger (or giving it a seat in the car, to use Elizabeth Gilbert’s metaphor).

The Gifts of Imperfection is about embracing who you are (it’s in the tagline), and I’ll admit for the first several chapters, I didn’t reap the full benefits of the advice because I couldn’t hear above the static in my head that said to the author, easy for you to say, Dr. Viral-Ted-Talk-Perfect.

But then Brown dropped this bomb on page 72, and I knew it was love:

Understanding my behaviors and feelings through a vulnerability lens rather than strictly through an addiction lens changed my entire life . . . I can definitely say, ‘Hi, My name is Brené, and today I’d like to deal with vulnerability and uncertainty with an apple fritter, a beer and a cigarette, and spending seven hours on Facebook.’ That feels uncomfortably honest.

Let me be clear: These books are not about overcoming addiction, nor is this post. The nugget I keep thinking about falls under the section “Cultivating Meaningful Work,” where Brown talks about the struggle to find meaningful work and define who we are through what we do.?

I just got up to top off my coffee, so you know a big revelation (vulnerability?) is at hand. When I finished college at 23, I wanted to be a writer. That was as far as I’d gotten. I hadn’t gone to career services (it might not have existed then); I hadn’t done any internships. But I didn’t actually write anything, for reasons I am still processing.

Instead I got a string of high-stress, low paying, unfulfilling jobs in order to have health insurance. I was terrified of committing to one career path because I sensed it would rule out everything else.?

At 27 I pulled the escape hatch and applied to graduate school. A month before my departure, I had lunch with two friends. Wrestling with overwhelming anxiety, I admitted that I was terrified to go, to move to another city and commit to a discipline. My friend Lowell looked at me point blank and said, “Will you go into debt if you go?” I replied with a feeble “no.”

“Then just do it,” she shrugged. And so we ate our chips and salsa and drank from our enormous, ice-filled restaurant glasses, and the conversation moved on. Just like that.

So Brown introduces the idea, by Marci Alboher, of slash careers. We do not have to be defined by a single career. I am a communications manager/illustrator/writer.?

Still in my 20s, I wrote some witty Facebook communication that my friend Nick shared with his sister, Katy. Her response was, “Kay should be a writer,” to which Nick responded, “She is a writer.”

When he related this to me, I felt a little spark. Could it possibly be true because I say it is so? It’s taken me 15 years (and probably 15 books) to realize the answer is yes.

More recently I’ve been doing watercolor illustrations in my free time, and I post them to my modest Instagram account. Last summer I discovered a chic little boutique had begun following me. This was odd because my handful of followers are made up of my 15 friends and maybe a couple of their friends. It came up in conversation, and my older sister said, “Oh yes, I was in that boutique. I told them ‘my sister is an illustrator; you should follow her on Instagram.’”?

If a group of impossibly beautiful and young shop women who wear expensive Milly dresses sought me out and followed me, well, anything is possible, which leads me to Big Magic.

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Admittedly I am only partially through Big Magic, but I’m at the part where Gilbert keeps talking about how inspired ideas alight upon us, and if we don’t seize them, they find someone who will. This post began to take form, so I forced myself to put down the book and open Google Docs. (I really did try to take a nap first, but I was too hopped up on coffee).

I used to show Gilbert’s Ted Talk on creativity to my visual communication class, and Big Magic is an elaboration of that wonderful talk.?

A caveat: I’ve recommended this book to several people (including Lowell, from above!) only to get some version of this response: “I read Eat, Pray, Love. I can’t stand her.”?

Fair enough. Gilbert’s histrionics annoyed me in Eat, Pray, Love, too, but I’m still enjoying this book.?

Certainly its focus on casting aside fears is reminiscent of Brown’s books, and so is Gilbert’s exploration of the whole career/vocation thing. In the section “Permission” (my marginalia: This section is so incredibly liberating), she advises us to declare our intent. Call yourself everything you want to be, and remember this adage from W.C. Fields: “It ain’t what they call you; it’s what you answer to” (p. 121).

My other favorite section is “Persistence,” mostly because I’ve had so little of it for most of my life. If I showed up on day one and wasn’t the best, I would throw in the towel. That is changing. Fail! Fail again! Fail better! And stop demanding that your creative endeavors turn into a paycheck. Be OK with having a career that pays the bills; there is time to pursue your creativity in the hours outside of that work. It still counts. It’s still who you are and what you do.

Creative Confidence by Tom Kelley & David Kelley

My friend and former student gifted Creative Confidence to me several years ago, and if Big Magic felt familiar to The Gifts of Imperfection, it also elicited memories of the themes in Creative Confidence, and the book review I wrote on it in early 2019 but am just now sharing here.?

Creative Confidence is a lot less touchy feely than the previous two books, so maybe you just read this one if you’re not one to cower in fear beneath a monogrammed throw blanket, as I am.?

Chapter four is the reason I (originally) wrote this blog post (but see, I didn’t publish it; I needed the previous two books to do that); it’s worth the cover price alone. “Leap!” It implores the reader, “Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint?” Yes and yes. A million times yes.?

(Fun fact: My “about me” on my MySpace profile, circa 2005, read “Writer who’s never written a book. Realtor who’s never sold a house.”)

If I had the time, I would read chapter four every morning of my life. The general idea is, stop thinking and start doing, with plenty of anecdotes and caveats to help you do just that. Among them, semantics. The book cites author Steven Pressfield as replacing the word procrastination with resistance. Procrastination seems like weakness, but resistance is a foe; it’s a “call to arms.”?

Throughout my 20s and 30s I moved from place to place, lugging boxes of pristine art supplies with me, with the vague notion that one day I would paint masterpieces. Well, I’m busting out the paint brushes, and I don’t care if my paintings suck.?

We only see the best work of artistic geniuses, but think how many sketches and paintings they tore up and burned in fits of substance-fueled despair? This is another of the book’s insights: rapidly create and iterate. No one thing becomes precious when there are vast quantities of it.

Other themes include participatory solutions with a healthy dose of ethnography. A couple of chapters are more geared toward organizations than individuals, but they’re worth the read anyhow. The last chapter includes some useful creativity challenges for individuals or groups.

My only point of contention with the book is chapter five, “Seek.” It essentially encourages the reader to follow her bliss. While it’s well intentioned, it feels out of touch in a way that grates on my nerves. Here’s why:

Back in high school I believed that after college graduation I would face a tough choice: either remain anchored safely to one place, slaving away at a monotonous job and making a lot of money; or be a poor, wandering Bohemian, taking night trains across Europe and subsisting on fresh baguettes and cheap wine.? It never occurred to me that life in my 20s would be a disappointing hybrid of the two: living in my hometown and slaving away at a monotonous job where I earned barely enough money to afford my anti-anxiety medication and salon-grade shampoo.

To be fair, it does give merit to the idea that security (and health insurance) is important, but the examples used to illustrate the point that happiness is more important than prestige seem really out of touch. For example, one of the authors, Tom, left a high-powered but vacuous career in management consulting to “follow his heart” and work at IDEO. Um, if you ask me, it sounds really damn impressive at a cocktail party to say you work at the most renowned global design and innovation firm in the world. With that being said, the target audience for the book is more Silicon Valley types with HBS degrees than 20 somethings toiling away in their hometowns.

But I digress (that should be the title of this blog).???

You should still read the book.?

If you’re still reading (thank you!), I leave you with one more invective: Please buy these books locally. If they don’t have them, they can order them for you. It might take more than 24 hours to arrive, but they are worth the wait. Promise.