☕ saturday mornings - june 17, 2023

connection, rose seeds & why i write

Happy Saturday!

I hope you’re having a fantastic start to your weekend.

What I’ve been up to:

• I've spent the week at my cottage and settled into one of the best routines I've had. Mornings start around 5:45am. I start a fire, read for an hour, then run or workout, stretch, jump in the lake, meditate for 30 minutes, then write for two hours.

• I'm continuing my study of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and The Hero's Journey. Focusing intently on one work and diving deep has felt really good.

• I've been more active on Twitter sharing my 4-5 most interesting ideas every day. If you want to be friends, please reach out :)

Now I'm writing semi full-time, I want to focus my efforts on high-quality evergreen essays. I've secretly posted a few already. Starting next week, I'll be sending out new essays every Tuesday. (The newsletter isn't going anywhere, but I do want to compress it.)

Here's an inside look at the most interesting ideas I've explored this week.

Enjoy.

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✍️ quote i’m pondering:

American poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou on human connection:

“We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans — because we can.

We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone- because we have the impulse to explain who we are. Not just how tall we are, or thin… but who we are internally… perhaps even spiritually. There’s something, which impels us to show our inner-souls.

The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know."

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📚 book passage i loved:

“When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice that it is small, but we do not criticize it as “rootless and stemless.”

We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don't condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; nor do we criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies.

Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.”

― The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey

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💡 idea from me: on writing

Little boy writing a letter, Norman Rockwell

This week, Noah Kagan asked me why I write. Without thinking I responded: clarity of thought. Writing allows me to stitch together my accumulated ideas and experiences, distill them to their essence and arrive at a conclusion.

I never truly meet my ideas until I write them down. Until I pull them out of the complexity of my mind and trap them on the simplicity of paper. Until I make the intangible, tangible.

I used to think of thinking and writing as separate activities. I had to think about something, then write it down. Thought predicated writing. But, as I've written more I've discovered they're symbiotic.

Writing is thinking.

Not an expression of thought, but an act of thinking itself. As I write, new ideas, connections, epiphanies emerge. I stumble upon unfamiliar thoughts, ask unnerving questions, arrive at unexpected answers. None of which would occur without writing. Most of my essays start out with a seed of an idea, and as I write they sprout and grow and change organically, almost out of my control, to bloom in forms I never expected.

When thoughts are bouncing around like pinballs in my head, ideas twisted like an old pair of earphones, it's tempting to want escape, seek distraction. But like an annoying neighbour knocking on the door, they don't go away until I deal with them. Give them the attention they demand.

John Edgar Wideman: Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up. But the writing is a way of not allowing those things to destroy you.

Writing is pure process. It's lifelong. It never ends and you never finish. It’s a craft that can never be commanded. The muses can never be mastered.

Each day I write, I imagine I'm baking a brick in a fiery furnace. Distilling a part of my life philosophy, expressing a sliver of my worldview. A tiny piece of me. Humble. Meager. Small. But I trust this small daily effort over time can create something immense and magnificent. Each brick builds my intellectual home.

Writing is work. Writing is the hardest thing I do every day. I often joke with friends when I'm writing I'm "in the trenches". Immersed. It's straining, stressing, strenuous. It stretches my mind to its limits. But because of that effort, it strengthens me.

Writing forces me to open, to connect with what I feel. I can't pretend. I can't fake it. On days when I stumble, when I struggle to process the world, when it feels like everyone around me is doing well and I'm kind of missing something, writing is my outlet.

Ernest Hemingway: There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Ultimately, I try to share fragments of my heart and soul. Holding onto a hallucination of hope that it makes just one person's day a little more beautiful.

I don't think I ever want to stop. I don't think I ever can.

PS - this idea was incubated on Twitter.

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❓ question i’m asking:

Where in my life do I need to set boundaries?

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📸 photo of the week:

“Sometimes” by Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver has become one of my favourite poets. Her words inspire a reflective calm, a deep gratitude, and a rich love for the natural world.

Oliver also coined an idea I’ve been obsessed with: Attention is the beginning of devotion.

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Thank you for reading. I appreciate you.

Spread the love—If you want to support my work, the best way to do so is by sharing it with others who would enjoy it. Beyond that, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it.

Get in touch—If my writing resonated or if you just want to be friends, please reach out 😊 Reply to this email, leave a comment, or find me on Twitter!

Much love to you and yours,

Tommy