On Being Sloppy
And reading your owner's manual.
I’ve been anticipating this post all week, pondering what I could write about, trying to finish it early, knowing I’d be out-of-office for several days. And now, at the eleventh hour, I cannot muster anything I deem sufficiently worthy for you to read. I feel like I’ve failed you.
I have failed myself.
It’s simple: I got sloppy. I didn’t flex the muscle enough; I didn’t put in my hours this week. I didn’t make time to fill the well. And so this happens. They all warn you about it, sigh. A lesson I will surely need to learn repeatedly.
But it’s ok. I know now that when you fall off the bandwagon, you get back on again. That’s it.
I’ll be back next week. But before I go…
This Week’s Sharing
Substack co-founder, Hamish McKenzie, has a new podcast called The Active Voice. In the first episode, he interviews George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo and A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (which I’m slowly getting through). Saunders has his own writing-focused Substack which, needless to say, is very popular and has been interesting to follow. He is one of those writers who are (generous) teachers at heart.
This quote from the interview struck a chord with me this week:
On succeeding as a writer
So much of this artistic life, I think of it as self-gaming. You’ve got a chance to tell yourself all kinds of stories about what you’re doing. If you tell yourself the right stories, you become more positive and powerful. If you tell yourself the wrong stories, you don’t.
- George Saunders on The Active Voice.
Source: https://read.substack.com/i/79357160/on-succeeding-as-a-writer
Ok, so this one also resonated strongly:
On the power of observing your own mind
As you get older, it’s fascinating that you’ve been the prisoner of this mind and body all these years and had beautiful experiences and rough ones and at some point it’s like someone gives you the owner’s manual and goes, ‘Look, your mind is making all of this chaos and all this beauty. You might want to take a little minute and see what that thing is like from the inside.’ - George Saunders on The Active Voice.
Source: https://read.substack.com/i/79357160/on-the-power-of-observing-your-own-mind
My mind has been feeling very chaotic this week. Sometimes it’s hard to see its beauty. But I think Saunders has a point. On that note, I’m off to go read my owner’s manual.
Yours,
G.G.L
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