Wrapping the Year: 1,000 Pages and Artistry

We have this wonderful week between Christmas and New Years Day that is just perfect for taking stock of the year and girding our loins, optimistically, of course, for the next spin around the sun. Since this is the last edition of “Things to Realize” for the year, I thought I’d do some reflection of my own and maybe sprinkle a little inspiration for the new year.

But there is no getting around the fact that 2022 was a stressful year for too many people. This was on net a good year for me, but like a lot of you, this year was tough and difficult. I lost family and a friend to COVID, and other friends and family are suffering from Long COVID. The hay I bought last year for my horse appreciated in value more than my 401k. And the nuclear threat looms for the first time in decades.

So I don’t want to go into a newsletter celebrating good things without acknowledging that 2022 was tragic and difficult for many of us. It was. It was a difficult year.

My late wife’s eternal optimism and resilience rubbed off on me, and I will not brush it off. She and I went through some rough and existential times. I look back and I think, how the hell did we do it? We were poking at Life, trying to find a way through, and we were rebuffed more often than I care to remember. But inevitably, we’d find a way. How did we do it? We found that optimism, hope, love, kindness, gratitude, and compassion carries us through difficult times, along with the resilience to get back into the fray if and when Life doesn’t care how optimistic you are. All her life Jenny was accused of being a “Pollyanna,” the character who always saw the good side of anything that happened to her. Well, being a Pollyanna extended her life by decades.

I give my love to all my readers and friends. May we find the solace and resolve to meet 2023 with a full reserve of love and kindness, and a renewed strength and passion. Happy New Year!

I. 1,000 Pages

As I wrote earlier this year, in January I started the practice of writing “morning pages,” which consists of writing, by hand on letter-sized paper, three pages of whatever comes into your head, every morning. I started this practice after reading an interview in The New Yorker with Julia Cameron, who wrote about the benefits of morning pages in her book “The Artist’s Way.” It is a practice that she recommends to unblock creativity. There are no rules, other than to write three full-sizes pages, by hand, every day. What you write does not matter. How you write does not matter. Grammar, punctuation, and style do not matter. Spelling and legibility do not matter. Only that you do it. It is a sort of written meditation.

I have done this every day since January 30. This Thursday will mark my 1,000th page. That’s a lot of pages, and I am amazed that I could do it.

I have to say that although doing three pages a day sounds daunting, if you have any kind of internal dialog at all, you can do it. You are just writing it down. But the process of writing it down gets it out of your head, the pace of writing by hand forces a slower pace to your thoughts, and the fact of getting your thoughts, whatever they may be, down on paper gives them an unconsciously-achieved clarity. And that clarity will hit pay dirt. There have been many days where I just sit back and say to myself, “what just happened?”

The benefits of doing this unfold over time. Cameron’s stated benefits are that they unblock creativity, and that has definitely happened, in areas both expected and unexpected. They definitely helped my writing, but they also helped my photography, and I never considered myself a photographer.

The benefits build on each other. Initially, the morning pages helped me over the hump of having to have a reason to write. Now, I just write. Then, it was having to be correct in my writing, both grammatically and factually. And now, I just write. Then, as I wrote about in July, they kick-started flow, the state of creative focus that can be incredibly elusive. Instead of waiting for, or needing flow, I just write, and the act of writing strengthens the flow “muscle.”

The practice of writing the morning pages makes it clear what matters and what does not matter. Something can pop up, and I think, oh damn! I need to do that! Or, there’s something that’s bugging me that I need to figure out. Sometimes I’ll start writing about something, and then it dawns on me: This does not matter. And so I stop writing about it. And then I write about something that does matter. Sometimes I’ll be on a roll and three pages is not enough. But three pages are a forced stop. I did not expect this, but that forced stop at three pages clarifies what matters.

A more recent benefit is that I have become much more direct and assured in my conversations and discussions, especially at work. Two attributes of the morning pages contributed to this.

The first is that harnessing and reining in my thoughts every morning is an exercise in how to be on top of stray thoughts and in how to distill fuzzy wisps of thought into actual words. Again, this is not hard. This is just what auto-magically happens when you write down your inner dialog or whatever comes to mind each morning. In my case, this developed the confidence that I won’t be tongue-tied or at a loss for words mid-utterance.

The second contributing factor is the benefit of unvarnished and unfiltered writing. There is no one to impress, no need to justify anything. No need to prevaricate or embellish. Nothing that will end up in search algorithms or in databases used by artificial intelligence engines. There is no audience. Knowing this clears out the dross and what is left is what is. Things become clear and what you think about them becomes clear.

This combination results in my being much more direct in my discussions when I want to be and when it is needed. The benefit to me is huge and I had not expected it.

I’m telling you all about this for two reasons. The first is obvious - doing morning pages is beneficial to me, and I believe they can be beneficial to you, whether you are a writer or a “creative,” or not. The second reason is that I’m 62, and it is clear to me that being able to grow never stops. Doing new things, learning new things, there’s no age limit for that. And so, go for it. Have fun, man! Why not?

II. Kara Swisher Times Two

I listened to a lot of Kara Swisher this year. She has two podcasts that I find are well done and informative: “On with Kara Swisher” and “Pivot.” Swisher is a great interviewer and she does not take any BS from her guests. She is a long-time technology writer who became prominent when she joined up with Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal, and I have been following her for years. Her take on technology is direct, unflinching, and she does not deify any of the Silicon Valley “bros” who foist their privacy violations and crappy notions of “free speech” on us (“for me, not for thee”). There are a lot of people who avoid sitting across from her, including, lately, Elon Musk and Sam Bankman Fried.

Her interviews are great. This year she interviewed Piers Morgan (which was fun), Eric Idle, Yoel Roth (Twitter’s former head of safety and security, fired by Musk), John Legend, Steve Case (of AOL fame), John Fetterman, Maggie Haberman, Chris Cuomo, and Hilary Clinton. And more! And that’s just since September. She digs in, and each interview is worth listening to.

The “Pivot” podcast is co-hosted by Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. Scott made his money in Silicon Valley and he’s a professor at NYU. They do not always agree, and they play off each other extremely well. They dissect what’s going on at Twitter and with Elon Musk (of course), they discuss the impacts of privacy and the lack thereof, the impact of artificial intelligence, and other topics. They are considered a “tech business podcast,” but they do cover a wide area, and talk about their kids and the challenges of raising children in a world of TikTok and Instagram. They are both insightful while being funny (and sometimes raunchy) as hell. I never miss an episode.

Kara and Scott are really good people. They are intelligent, and I enjoy listening to them. I recommend both podcasts highly.

III. Creativity, Artistry, Friendship, and Life

“Something that Steve always took great pride in was being surrounded by artists and poets and musicians, and that has to do with design. So, you design who you’re with, and you find diversity of thought, and it brings out something different in you.

- Laurene Powell Jobs, on Steve Jobs

This has been a creative year for me, and it was sparked by being blessed with having friends who are brilliant photographers, and being able to hang with them several times this year. Creativity seems to spread by osmosis and practice. Each of my friends are creative, and they are creative in their own ways. We can be in the same place, at the same time, and looking at the same things, and yet, each photographer’s images are unique, creative, and inspiring. It really is uncanny: “how did you get that shot? What the hell, man!” I mentioned above about learning new things, and well, my God, there is so much to know about photography. It has been inspirational and fun to learn from these artists and to try to figure this all out.

Creativity, art, design, these are the reasons we are here. These are why we exist. All that we as humans do is in support of artists and dreamers. There is nothing more human, and, for that matter, Godlike, than creativity and artistry in whatever form it takes. This is what we do. I am a technical person, and always have been. I love art and am creative, but my left brain is dominant. It has been thrilling this year to start looking at this wonderful planet and people through an artistic lens.

It is so easy to get lost in the tactical bullshit of life. The needs of the day, the petty crap of day to day living, man! They are distracting! Yes, we need money. Yes, we have to deal with the broken water main or the idiot relative or the missing Amazon package. These things are the leeches of life. The morning pages, being creative in photography and my writing, being with wonderful people, and being grateful for it all, these are the things that matter. Everything else, we shed. Everything else.

I wish you all a wonderful and creative new year, and may we all slip the shackles of the mundane and the petty.