A little over ten years ago I released my first blog post. To mark the anniversary, I’ve been chewing on a question: “What’s changed in the last ten years?”
That’s a huge question, so I’ve been considering it explicitly with reference to reading and writing. The answer: “More than I thought but less than I hoped.”
”More than I thought…”
It’s hard to understate how transformative the consistent practice of reading and writing has been. I did not anticipate how something so mundane—reading words, writing them—could so catalyse change. How it could alter me as a person and drive such a wide range of downstream activities.
Sure, the production of blogs, books and newsletters seem like obvious first order effects. But the relationships that emerged (and those that deepened)? The exposure to and activity within different fields and domains? The re-burgeoning power of the textual? The reshaping of the texture of my own thought and ways of being in the world?
All amount to magnitudes more than I was expecting from something so simple as having thoughts and translating them to words consistently over time.
”…but less than I hoped.”
Yet. Yet… I don’t think the changes are what I hoped for, way back when. See, I’ve always had to manage a tension between big ambitions and an innate desire for a small life.
”Big” doesn’t mean dents in universes; more like unreasonable standards for processes and outsized expectations for outcomes. “Small” doesn’t mean a mindless and meaningless existence; more like solace, small circles, and a deepening understanding of a select few activities done again and again over time.
Somehow, some-why, the future I think I imagined for myself a decade ago doesn’t quite measure up to the present I find myself occupying. That’s less because of some explicit fall-short than a category change, a phase shift in what I hope for, and why. Not trying to walk 100 miles and only achieving 10, or 1 (or 0.1)—more like changing races, or playing a different game.
”And that’s okay.”
When the answer to the anniversary question emerged, I braced for something like anger, for quiet rage with a salting of resentment. But it didn’t hit. Instead, what arrived was wonder at what has been and curiosity for what still is to come. A recent conversation helped me realise this. It included an expression akin to, “This is not how I thought my life would turn out.” For most people, most of the time, in most places and spaces, that’s reality. Sometimes that turning out really sucks (like a lot). But mostly it just is. Our lives unfold in unanticipated ways, and un-unanticipating them would ruin the fun.
Yet. Yet… Part of that fun is its two-wayedness. You and I are written by the story, but we are its authors, too. It is for us to be pushed and to be pulled, and it is also for us to push and to pull in contrary, unanticipated ways.
Swell & Cut 