remain radiant.
plus, writer's block makes me murderous
I never thought I would entertain the idea of strangling someone in such vivid detail. Until today.
I haven’t been able to write this week. Like at all. Like Kurt-Vonnegut-armless-legless-man-with-a-crayon-in-my-mouth level.
Well, I typed a whole whack of words but most of it was nonsense. In the literal way that it made no sense. Even Dr. Seuss would be envious.
I wrote 3,000 words about death panic attacks but killed them all. Then, I remembered Alex Dobrenko told me, if I’m stuck, to write about the obstacle. “Block-ception” I murmured to myself with a smirk. Like Inception but with writer’s block. You would’ve laughed. You had to be there.
So I typed 6,000 words about my writer's block… but said nothing.
I had done it. I was so blocked I couldn’t even write about writer’s block. That must be a world record or something. Maybe a word record. “Most drivel written in a Google Doc”. Can someone look that up?
Yeah, you may have had writer’s block, but it’s nothing like my writer’s block. My writer’s block is the real deal.
*
I think I’ve reloaded the Substack app 100 times today.
I keep checking that orange bell for a hit of dopamine and distraction. “Good thing you deleted Twitter, eh?”
I keep reading essays that are better than anything I can write. “Are my thoughts actually profound or am I just in love with myself?”
I keep switching my black steel ring from finger to thumb to finger. “This thing was supposed to make me more creative??”
Anything to avoid the keyboard.
Committing to writing is scary because what if writing doesn’t commit to me? What if it leaves me? What if I’m left empty-handed, grasping for words I can no longer find?
That’s the fear of commitment, right? To choose something, but maybe it doesn’t choose you back.
I still try to show up. But God, it’s hard. It’s really hard.
*
Last week, I wrote my most popular piece ever.
The attention was hard to handle. I felt the heat of the self-constructed spotlight on my neck. The pressure to follow up but also the knowledge that I certainly won’t and it will be many more months of obscurity before my next breakthrough.
It’s funny when I get what I wanted and realize I didn’t want all of it and there are parts I don’t want at all. Like come on, just gimme the best parts.
I’m still that quiet kid who can’t talk in big groups. Who loves books and hates attention.
But at the same time, I crave praise for my work. I’m in love with being noticed, but afraid of being seen. I want to grow an audience but I also don’t want an audience at all.
I write because I can’t help but ruminate, contemplate, pontificate. Pay attention. But that sensitivity doesn’t stop once I hit publish.
Some days, I doubt I can handle the compliments, the criticism, the noise.
*
Okay Tommy. Keyboard. Focus on the keyboard.
Man, this peaceful piano playlist is peaceful. Spotify wasn’t kidding. This hostel coffee is miserable. Still, maybe I’ll mosey back to the lobby and get another one. Maybe coffee number 7 will wake me up.
Besides, I can’t write anything.
*
I’m sitting in a silent coworking space. All of this is racing through my brain at approximately the same time. Then this digital nomad guy waltzes in, about my age.
And you might ask, “Tommy, how can you tell he’s a digital nomad?”
Oh… you can tell all right.
Man bun and a fanny pack strapped around a North Face fleece, he flops down into the desk beside me, flips open his 17-inch Alien gaming laptop with a red and blue backlit keyboard and puts on some $12 headset with a mic like he’s getting ready for a NASA launch. Pulls up treasury spreads then hops on a Zoom call with his four buddies and starts bragging about his BTC portfolio and Ethereum swing trades and tracking W-patterns closely. In a silent working space. And oh my gosh I just saw him count to eight on his fingers, why does he even need to count to eight? What is eight?
As the venom boils in my blood and fantasies of asphyxiation flicker in the back of my mind (it’s Shadow Work I swear) and I condemn humanity to the fiery pits of hell… I remember Jesus.
Jesus only asks one thing of me. It wasn’t to worship him or go to church or even to believe in God. It was unconditional love.
Jesus only asks me to love my neighbor. To love my neighbor like he is myself. To love my neighbor because he is myself.
*
I’ve listened to David Foster Wallace’s This is Water commencement speech every night this week.
His core idea is simple but profound: It’s within my power to control my attention. To choose how I extract meaning from reality. To see the world I want to see, the human nature I want to believe in.
That is the mark of an educated mind. (My university missed the boat on that one but at least i learned time value of money really really really well).
DFW says:
I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do…
If you really learn how to pay attention, it will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.
*
My role in making the world more liveable is to love.
As hard as it is. Because it is so hard. Love requires attention and awareness and discipline and, most of all, sacrifice.
It’s a lot easier to give up, give in. It’s a lot easier to burn than to build. To be angry and bitter. To only see selfishness and ignorance. To carve myself a little slice of hell and stew in it.
“For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.” (Matthew 7:13)
But I have to love.
I have to love my brother when he argues with one of my ideas. I have to love the driver who is in such a hurry to turn right he almost clips me as I cross the street in the freezing rain. I have to love my first girlfriend who was matching on Tinder before we broke up.
I have to love myself. Even when the words go missing and I’m stripped of the one thing I’ve committed myself to. Even when I fret I won’t be able to handle the success I probably won’t achieve. Even when I feel alone.
I’m like “even the guy with the man bun? do i have to love him???”
The only answer i hear is “yes… even him.”
Thank you
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👋 what i’ve been up to:
I spent the week in Bariloche, a small Swiss-settled ski town in Patagonia. It feels like Canada here. After weeks in a city, it’s *magical* to return to the stillness of nature. 99% of my problems are solved when I get outside and touch grass a little more often.
Wrote this on Sunday: “This morning I woke up, journaled, and read Campbell with a hot iron-black coffee. I crossed the street and bought a fruit-filled pastry from a local bakery for $2. Now, I’m walking on a pine tree curtained road with snow-peaked mountains overlooking a frost blue lake to my right. Swiss-styled timber ski chalets perched on the mountain to my left. A dusting of snow drifting down. I pass clamoring coffee shops, bustling with life. It smells like Christmas and every house has a big grassy yard with a German shepherd. I wonder why I stayed in the city for so long.”
I called an audible and decided to stay in Bariloche for my last week in Argentina. I would’ve never done that a year ago. But I love it here and I value creating more agency.
✍️ quote i’m pondering:
Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz on home:
“Home is not where you were born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease.”
🖋️ poem i adored:
❓ question i’m asking:
What does it mean to feel whole?
📸 photo of the week:
My best photo from Week 8 of learning photography in public.
See my best four photos on Substack Notes.
Thank you for reading!
This was one of those weeks where I questioned why I write (and my entire existence lol) and I really appreciate you sticking with me :)
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You got all my love,
Tommy
There needs to be a word for the phenomena of writing a great piece and then the next week feeling absolutely crushed and blocked because of it. I related to so much of what you wrote here and was smiling throughout. I'm glad you wrote through it and it was a great takeaway at the end!
Drifty. Authentic. Smirk inducing. Thanks.