Inflection Point
In which our humble narrator asks you some questions
I made a big list this morning. Got out the black dry erase pen, the big, thick one. I wrote down everything I’m working on in my personal and professional life. Filled the board.
Marriage. Finances. Work Projects, either underway, in planning, in fundraise mode, actively generating real world dough, or just notions. Ten of them! Health. Insurance. Housing. Directions. New educational ideas, like taking a screenwriting course.
It was a lot.
I even wrote it up as a piece, and that turned into a series of pieces, and then I sent it to a couple of friends and I just… hit a wall. Like that boat in Speed 2. Except Sandy Bullock wasn’t on it with me, just Willem Dafoe and Jason Patric, and they were really confused.
Well?
What do you all think?
I am at a point of inflection.
I want to go in several directions with this newsletter.
I have this piece semi-prepared about how I’ve started to use the business logic mechanisms and project management stuff I’ve learned throughout my career, and applying it to the real life part of me— the finances and multiple projects and health stuff that goes with aging.
It’s like the start of a whole series, but does anyone even give a shit? Is this a business book I should be pitching somewhere else? Or just another rabbit hole my brain went down?
I have another piece in the hopper that’s not fully developed, but it’s another take on grief and a deep dive on my dear, late friend Doug Jones. Through the lens of his favorite movies, even the weird ones like Demon Lover Diary and his beloved Malibu High.
I’m not sure I’m ready to finish it. I also don’t want to keep using this newsletter as a platform for my grief, I don’t think that’s valuable to you all, unless I can find a larger meaning than, simply, I miss my friends who are gone. Especially Doug.
I have other pieces in bits and bobs, movie stuff I want to write about. The old man’s guide to video games I keep threatening to write that last week almost turned into. More writing about the books that I’ve been absorbing almost obsessively, gorging on words.
Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton, Norwood by Charles Portis, the first Hap and Leonard book by Joe R Lansdale, books about writing by E.M. Forster and Vivian Gornick and Philip Lopate. HP Lovecraft short stories, and Lawrence Wright’s The End of October, and Distant Dead by Heather Young and some Ellroy book I never read before.
Then there’s exploring the creative act itself. I love writing more and more, but isn’t it a truism that when a writer writes about writing, it just means they ran out of ideas? The well ran dry that day.
I have historical stuff, about growing up in Minneapolis. About the dormitory I lived in with its cast of characters including Mark Vargas who trafficked in great black plastic garbage bags of weed, stowed massive, tremendously illegal drugs in my dorm closet for three hours one cold Wednesday, and got arrested driving the wrong way down the Washington Avenue Bridge.
Or Dave Gale who we all called Dave Rail because he also dealt drugs and fake IDs and wound up on the first or second season of COPS on the new Fox station, shot literally on the 12th floor of my dorm.
The 12th floor of Middlebrook Hall at the University of Minnesota. The QUIET FLOOR.
I have unearthed past pieces I’m digging through for long abandoned ideas.
I have new ideas that spark every time I try to close my eyes at night. Well, a lot of times at night. Ok, sometimes.
But only at night! Not when it’s any kind of convenient.
I have lots of places to go, but I want to know what you all want to hear!
Feedback is very welcome and will dictate, at least for the moment, the direction I’m taking this thing in. It’s a bit like that big ship above, I’m under Speed and I need to make that turn or I’m gonna hit the dock.. (or miss the turn entirely). Or explode.
Or was that Speed 1?
Thanks for indulging this call for feedback. I’m Nick Tangborn, and I’m an entrepreneur, writer, consultant, Chief of Staff, fractional CMO, helpful tech geek to my Dad, and probably some other stuff besides. You can reach me at nicholas@areyouexperienced.co or just comment on this piece.
As usual, this is still entirely free, but if you want to contribute, you make everything much easier in my life.
Controlling your narrative for consumption purposes is capitalism at its core. Grind culture. We’re all sick to death of it. What I enjoy reading the most from you or anyone is when you stumble over a nugget that hits home. If my writing moves me, it has more chance of moving the reader. You gotta go for the sticky vulnerable stuff regardless of what your overarching theme is. Jobs, aging, searching for employment are all provocative and lined with sticky stuff. Feel your way through this and don’t try too hard to organize that Idea Factory. I love your drawing—we’re all friggin nutz and that’s our charm. Thanks for this piece!
I have been in this place! Here's my hot take: Your inspiration channel is open, which means you'll have more ideas than you can humanly pursue. Now you have to work on being in the moment and listening to your heart and intuition when it's time to write (or create). You can't analyze or quantify or crowdsource what to do next. You have to feel it. When you feel it, we will feel it, too.