Trial and Error

On experimentation and middle age.

“A Painter at Work” (1875) by Paul Cezanne.

I’ll always wrestle with patience /
The dissonance of purgatory /
But I’ll try to make use of the tension /
In this first and second act of my story. 

—Sleeping at Last, "Build"

Hi friends,

One of the challenges of writing in 2025 is the demand for our attention that makes the “need to post” a relentless pressure for creators of all types, from artist to entrepreneur.

The gatekeepers have been defeated, and the tools for publishing are just on the other side of a computer or smartphone screen. Because of the democratization of content-sharing (i.e., anyone can publish whatever they want for nearly zilch), professionals on any platform tell you to post as much as possible, no matter the quality, because you never know when the algorithm might place your work in front of the right person to make it go viral.

This has been a challenge for me.

For one, the supply of nonsense inside my big-ole dome is limitless. Imagine a cable network with 1,500 channels, most of them unwatchable. Or a souvenir store in a tourist town. At this moment, I possess raw materials for a thousand products, and yet I know that much of it is crap and, thus, should never see the light of day.

Just like writers jostle for the attention of the Reader, we, as Consumers, are being fought over every second. Even for the Smart Ones who’ve broken the habit of scrolling mindlessly through TikTok (all social media is TikTok now, by the way), Google, Amazon, and Wikipedia are all right there to scratch the phantom itch.

I’ve tried my best to break bad habits by practicing the ancient art of slowing down. It’s easy to do so when I’m sucked into a good book (always print, not digital). When I fish or smoke a pipe or hang with friends and our children at the pool, I can chill. But when I write, it’s like the pressure relief valve of my heart and mind is broken.