what comes to you in the silence

Some of the work I’m proudest of didn’t get a single “Like” here or on Facebook.

Austin Kleon shared Michaela Coel’s Emmy acceptance speech where she spoke of how “visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success” and added, “don’t be afraid to disappear from it, from us, for a while and see what comes to you in the silence.”

Kleon then added, “Silence is a space for something to happen.” It often is enlightening to step away from the electronics and all the stimulation and turn off the brain or present myself with a blank page and see what fills that space.

I just stopped and looked through the window of my room here, not far from the shores of Green Bay, and a lone bird flew across the little bit of sky I can see above the trees, probably a gull, maybe a pelican, but high enough that I couldn’t be sure, and alone enough that I wondered if it was lost and seeking its friends — Do birds have friends? colleagues? fellow travelers? They have mates, of course, but what else do we really know?

Where I was going before the bird flew across my consciousness is how right Coel’s comment felt. Something special might be waiting in the silence when you disconnect, when you dare something that might not immediately gather those precious Likes. A swarm of clicks can be satisfying, but so can that connection that, for now at least, is only within.

W.B. Watching: Goliath

Red and I spent Friday and Saturday nights binge-watching Season 4 of the very fine lawyer melodrama Goliath, starring the incomparable Billy Bob Thornton as flawed but brilliant attorney Billy McBride.

We don’t binge-watch that much. We’ll glom onto a show and watch one or two episodes at a time, but to watch eight over two nights is rare for us. Goliath is that compelling.

The villain in this fourth and final story is Big Pharma, personified by the always riveting J.K. Simmons, and the opioid addiction crisis. In this era where the world has advanced from “trust us” to “shut up and take your medicine,” it’s encouraging to see a program that reminds us why many people are skeptical of the huge profit centers that peddle our pills.

Especially in the final courtroom showdown, a few things happen that had the newshound part of me thinking, “Objection, your honor, this wouldn’t happen in a real court,” but the here-I-am-now-entertain-me part of me thinking, “Oh, yeah. Yes, yes, go, go, go.”

Goliath Season 4 dropped Friday on Amazon Prime, and we actually found it by accident on opening night. I’m glad we did; it’s one of those rare shows that started out excellent and got even better in each of its successive seasons. This is one grand finale.

Time to stop comparing

Serendipity is a wonderful, awesome thing sometimes.

Friday morning I started through my “Important People” folder, the links to people who blog daily or at least often enough to pique my brain. One of those important people is Dean Wesley Smith, the prolific writer and daily blogger whose streak is somewhere around 4,000 days (this right here is my 421st consecutive daily blog).

Smith mentioned that he had spent HIS Thursday writing 4,000 words and recording a segment of an upcoming online class.

“Hmmph,” I said, and started thinking about how many weeks it had taken me to write the last 4,000 words of Jeep Thompson and the Lost Prince of Venus and how many years it has been since I spoke into a microphone.

Feeling a little sullen, it occurred to me that Smith’s wife, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, writes a writing business blog post every Thursday, so I clicked on her link next.

The title of this week’s blog is “Comparison is the thief of joy.”

Oh yeah. I have written 10 books in the last 13 years, nowhere near the hundreds of books and novels that Dean Wesley Smith has written, but 10 more than I had written in the previous 55 years of my life — oh yes, and half of those books in the last three or four years. The 20,000 words of the Jeep Thompson novel, while only halfway to the eventual total, are thousands of words more than any other novel I’ve written in the last nine years.

If I compare my efforts with other successful writers, I look like I’m standing still. If I compare my efforts with what I did before, I’m doing OK. That makes me feel better.

But the point of the quote, and Rusch’s blog post, is in the title quote, which she found in an emailing from a local voiceover company.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.”

Creativity is about expressing what gives you joy. If you love to write or play a musical instrument or dance or perform, do those things. Share your joy. It doesn’t matter if it’s better or worse than someone else, it doesn’t even matter if it’s better or worse than your own past work. It’s about sharing your present joy. Of course, the more you do it, the better you’ll be at it, but the point is to do it. Do what you love doing.

With 7 billion people in the world, you are likely to find someone who does it better, qualitatively and quantitatively. So what? This is your art, and no one else can do your stuff the way you do it.

So don’t bother comparing: Comparison is the thief of joy.

Be joyful!