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!
Well, I like hearing that. I guess I just don't want to go down a path and lose a bunch of folks, but this whole thing is an experiment anyway. I feel like all of the ideas I'm suggesting are natural parts of me, and like Dylan says, "I contain multitudes," or at least a couple things.
Hell yeah you do—and we’re all scattered shards of a broken social media mirror—who am I on Substack, who am I on BlueSky, who am I on Meta…good Gawd, help us all!
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.
I love stories - it's what makes us unique and able to collect mental dividends on. It's what drove me to Neil Strauss early on with The Long Hard Road Out of Hell and then his subsequent collection of tales.
You can weave in your own current elements of struggle, thoughts or whatnot along the way. Leverage the current stream of chaos that is surrounding us on the reg and create a new dimension for us to experience.
Nick, being another guy in his 50's, I appreciate your thoughts on aging. At the risk of alienating younger readers, I need all of the perspective/camaraderie I can get. THIS IS A WEIRD TIME in one's lifespan, and these are weird times we live in.
This thing started, originally, entirely about aging and career. It's obviously taken some hard right or left turns since then, mostly because I'm still figuring out what I want to write about, and what people want to read by me. The most successful pieces have been about grief, but that is probably because the initial subs were all friends who knew the folks I wrote about. Trying not to fall in a trap that way. But yeah, talking about the weird times from the perspective of a 55 year old dude, that's sort of the idea, albeit a (hopefully) somewhat enlighted old dude, aware of real issues that a lot of white folks over 50 don't encounter. Still, it's tough to find a good job out there after you hit the 50 mark, and that's a recurring theme -- what do you do when the workforce wants someone else?
DEF interested in strategy to dodge ageism and stay vital in the workforce! As an "at-will" employee of a corporation, a time will come when I will benefit from your wisdom.
You're an ace storyteller and I'm guessing you've got a ton more good ones to share. They don't all have to possess the inherent hilarity of the transformer fiasco or the Kate Moss encounter — I've enjoyed the heavier material you've published here, too.
Write what you know, write what you want, just write....
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!
Well, I like hearing that. I guess I just don't want to go down a path and lose a bunch of folks, but this whole thing is an experiment anyway. I feel like all of the ideas I'm suggesting are natural parts of me, and like Dylan says, "I contain multitudes," or at least a couple things.
Hell yeah you do—and we’re all scattered shards of a broken social media mirror—who am I on Substack, who am I on BlueSky, who am I on Meta…good Gawd, help us all!
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.
I love stories - it's what makes us unique and able to collect mental dividends on. It's what drove me to Neil Strauss early on with The Long Hard Road Out of Hell and then his subsequent collection of tales.
You can weave in your own current elements of struggle, thoughts or whatnot along the way. Leverage the current stream of chaos that is surrounding us on the reg and create a new dimension for us to experience.
Nick, being another guy in his 50's, I appreciate your thoughts on aging. At the risk of alienating younger readers, I need all of the perspective/camaraderie I can get. THIS IS A WEIRD TIME in one's lifespan, and these are weird times we live in.
This thing started, originally, entirely about aging and career. It's obviously taken some hard right or left turns since then, mostly because I'm still figuring out what I want to write about, and what people want to read by me. The most successful pieces have been about grief, but that is probably because the initial subs were all friends who knew the folks I wrote about. Trying not to fall in a trap that way. But yeah, talking about the weird times from the perspective of a 55 year old dude, that's sort of the idea, albeit a (hopefully) somewhat enlighted old dude, aware of real issues that a lot of white folks over 50 don't encounter. Still, it's tough to find a good job out there after you hit the 50 mark, and that's a recurring theme -- what do you do when the workforce wants someone else?
DEF interested in strategy to dodge ageism and stay vital in the workforce! As an "at-will" employee of a corporation, a time will come when I will benefit from your wisdom.
The Vargas story sounds entertaining, and human.
You're an ace storyteller and I'm guessing you've got a ton more good ones to share. They don't all have to possess the inherent hilarity of the transformer fiasco or the Kate Moss encounter — I've enjoyed the heavier material you've published here, too.
Write what you know, write what you want, just write....