Life

What I’ve learned about keeping a practice

Creativity, Life / /

During their four collegiate racing years, crew members Joe Rantz, Roger Morris, and George Hunt had been undefeated. In 1936, they led their University of Washington team to an Olympic gold medal.

In one of the most mentally and physically grueling sports on the planet, each had taken nearly half a million (469,000) strokes with his oar. Each had rowed approximately 4,344 miles—nearly the equivalent of Seattle to Japan. Of the 4,344 miles rowed, only 28 were during an actual race.

28!

In other words, more than 99% of what they did was practice.

In many ways, rowing was their practice—work done for its own sake and shared with the world.

Painting a picture for a big payout is not a practice. Painting a picture, selling it, treating the money as a nice bonus (a “preferred indifferent”, as the Stoics would call it), and then getting right back to painting another picture—that’s a practice.

You can have a practice of gardening or jiu-jitsu or cooking or pretty much anything. A practice is spiritual. There’s no room for ego. But you also must be a warrior and fight every day against boredom and despair and apathy.

I’ve kept a writing practice for a few years now and noticed recurring roadblocks—always mental, of course—like guilt, unreasonable expectations, and self-consciousness.

Below are some things I’ve learned that have helped me to keep a practice and stay (mostly) sane along the way:

It’s supposed to be hard, not stressful

Every evening, after the day’s work and responsibilities, I play fetch with my dog.

It’s one of my favorite times of the day. I cheer Riley on, reminding her, unequivocally, who the best girl is. I breathe in the crisp Arizona air. I gaze at the trees and the birds and the clouds. When the colors in the sky are especially vibrant, I pick my jaw off the ground and run inside to grab Courtney.

It’s usually around this time, when I’m fully engaged with my surroundings and having the time of my life, that the tyrant in my brain activates. You have an awful lot of time on your hands, it points out. Why don’t you work a little more so you don’t waste your life.

I used to let this voice get to me, my joy darkening to stress. Maybe I should work more, I’d think.

But I realized that if keeping a practice is going to cause me unnecessary stress, I don’t want it. If I’ve done my work for the day, I shouldn’t feel pressured to do more.

Of course, this doesn’t mean keeping a practice isn’t hard work; it’s some of the hardest work there is: self-directed and largely unacknowledged. But that doesn’t mean it has to be stressful. And it certainly doesn’t mean it’s allowed to bug me after I’ve put in my time for the day.

So now when the tyrant starts, I’ll think, remember the first rule for everything: don’t stress. There needs to be balance. If there’s not, I don’t want it. Then I discard the tyrannical thought and get back to rolling around in the grass with Riley so I don’t waste my life.

Just show up

This quote from Steven Pressfield has motivated me more than almost anything else when it comes to sitting down every day and writing:

“How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it. All that matters is that I put in my time and hit it with all I got. All that counts is that for this day, for this session I have overcome Resistance.”

I’ve learned that writers don’t get writer’s block. Writers get caught up thinking about whether their writing is good or bad.

It’s okay to feel like a jerk sometimes

I do a lot of my writing during my lunch hour.

This was easy when I worked remotely but it got tricky when we switched to a hybrid schedule. On office days, my coworkers would invite me to lunch and I would accept because they’re my buddies and I like hanging out with them. Plus I didn’t want to feel like a jerk by declining. So I would forgo my lunchtime writing, promising myself I’d write as soon as I got home.

But writing at home meant cutting into time with my wife, which I wasn’t willing to do. So I’d end up not writing anything and feeling frustrated about not having enough time. I realized if I wanted to stick to my practice I had to decline lunch invites.

I felt like a jerk at first, but taking lunch to myself has become the norm and, as far as I can tell, no one thinks anything of it.

Except for me. I think everything of it. The extra hour I’ve given myself has allowed me to stick to my practice.

Protecting your time for practice might make you feel like a jerk sometimes, and that’s okay. It’s probably a sign you’re on the right track.

If it’s not exciting, don’t do it

I’ve learned that if I’m having a tough time motivating myself to write, it’s usually because I’m not excited about the subject.

The daily job of writing the article or newsletter may not be exciting, but the initial idea should be. It’s still hard work. But if the subject is exciting, at least it resembles play in that it’s fun hard work. Like Wordle. Or children playing cops and robbers. 

Play can be serious business.

Set a timer

Here’s a fantastic way to torture yourself: work without a stop time. 

Focusing is easiest when it’s only for an hour or two. When the timer on my phone dings, I get to stop. Not after I’ve written something “good”, not after banging my head against the wall sounds like a better alternative. Just ‘til my phone dings.

There is no shortcut

It’s interesting how the top performers in almost every field can afford to give away their secrets. A world-class chef will explain step-by-step how she makes her famous dish. A celebrity makeup artist describes the exact technique that’s made him a fortune. How can they do this without worrying about instant competition?

Because they know the thousands of hours of practice it will take to get anywhere near their level. The subtleties and nuances can be learned only through experience, repetition, and consistent output.

Of course, competition is not what a practice is about. But you should want to be getting better, and there’s comfort in remembering that no one is exempt from putting in the hours.

There is no grand climax

Riding off into the sunset happens at the same place in every story: the ending.

Your work, like your life, isn’t culminating into some grand climax. It’s one continuous journey. So relax and get comfortable in the practice because the practice is all there is.

Self-consciousness is the enemy of life

When I was 19 and in my first year of college, I dropped out. I then did what every college dropout with no clue what they want to do with their life does: I moved back in with my parents and became a rapper.

My parents, bless their hearts, were supportive though confused. “Where are all these ‘haters’ you keep talking about?” my dad would ask.

But I wasn’t confused. With a knack for stringing rhymes together, I began making songs and marketing myself with astonishing reckless abandon. I made funny skits that I uploaded to YouTube. At one point I had something like 30,000 Twitter followers. One of those followers was Courtney.

Funny how life works.

I used to be uncomfortable sharing this part of my life. I would cringe when I thought about it. But I realized that not only should I not be uncomfortable, I should celebrate it. I shudder to think where I’d be without it.

Of course, I couldn’t have known at the time where it would lead. Stories told in hindsight can be deceptive, cloaked in a confidence that was never there. The truth is I had no idea what I was doing as a rapper, but I followed an inclination and gave it everything I had. As Courtney recently said to me, “No one ever knows what you’re doing, but you’re doing it like a motherf—er.”

It wasn’t that I overcame self-consciousness—it wasn’t that deep, I was just rebellious. But if I had been too self-conscious, there’s a good chance I never would have rapped. To me, that’s the saddest thought.

I bring this up here because self-consciousness can stop us before we start. And few things can make us more self-conscious than keeping a practice. We put our work, our heart, out in the world to be judged and criticized. We toil away while the world looks on, puzzled.

Maybe other people don’t “get” it. That’s okay. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: it’s you, not them, who will have to answer for your action or inaction 10, 20, 80 years from now.

No one is thinking about you, anyway. They’re thinking about themselves, about their own stuff.

Just keep going, keep practicing. Not because it may lead to something beyond anything you could have imagined, but because to not do so would be to turn away from not only your gift, but from life itself.

Besides, what else would you be doing?

Books Read This Month:

-I found How to Be an Artist by Jerry Saltz while browsing the shelves of Barnes and Noble, and there’s some good stuff in here about keeping a practice. Saltz even quotes the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose book I read last month: “My head often knows nothing about what my hand is writing.” The work is already within you. You just have to listen.

-I read Tamara Shopsin’s Arbitrary, Stupid Goal and thought it was fun and surprisingly deep. She writes about growing up in New York in her family’s restaurant/grocery store, and the wisdom her Dad would impart to customers. His motto was to work hard and keep moving forward but also to enjoy the pleasant distractions of daily life. What I like most about Shopsin is the subtle wisdom she puts into a simple, declarative sentence. I’m sure I missed a lot, but the stuff I did catch was great.

–The Art Thief by Michael Finkel. Oh my gosh, this book is SO good. For 10 years, Stéphane Breitwieser brazenly stole more than 300 pieces of artwork from museums and churches, worth an estimated $2 billion. He’d walk into a museum and, aside from the larger items he couldn’t conceal on his person, take whatever he wanted. Unfortunately for him, there was one thing he couldn’t have: enough.

–What It Is by Lynda Barry is brilliant. I’d say it’s in my top 3 books about writing, along with Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg and The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. (If you’re curious, check out the list I made of my all-time favorite books.) I started What It Is in January and savored my way through. Each page is illustrated with her drawings and doodles, stuff that makes you think, ‘Hey, I can do that!’ and then you start your own collage journal. She taught me a new way of finding stories to write about—not by thinking harder, but by letting the stories come to me. The writing exercises were wonderful. I loved this book so much and I’ll be going back to it again and again.

-I was so entertained by Michael Finkel’s The Art Thief that I ordered The Stranger in the Woods and found it to be just as good. What makes a person wander into the woods and stay there for 27 years? What happens when you spend more than a quarter of a century without having a single conversation with another person? It’s a wild, true story that had me thinking about our conflicting needs of solitude and togetherness, and how differently we’re all wired.

9 lessons I’ve learned from 10 years in a relationship

Life / /

My wife and I celebrated our 10th anniversary this month, and as a gift, I made a little scrapbook of our first 10 years together.

Looking at our first photos—the scraggly, 25-year-old me beaming next to my then-girlfriend—I thought to myself, wow, Emily, you were so clueless.

I spent this month thinking about what makes a relationship work and grow, and what I learned through my own experience.

I came up with a list of 9 lessons I’ve learned from 10 years in a relationship:

1. Ego is the cause of most relationship problems

If I had known the power of humility when I was 25 years old, I would have saved myself years of trouble.

Almost all relationship problems are solved with a genuine I see where you’re coming from. I would feel the same way if I were you. I was wrong. I’m sorry.

It took me a while to feel comfortable saying sorry, but I say it all the time now. It’s great. I say sorry almost too much. (I say almost because every once in a while, when the wind blows in from the east and the sun is shining just so, I’m not completely wrong.)

2. Listen like a best friend

Our partner is supposed to be our best friend. And best friends are inherently good listeners: comforting, helpful, and quick to take our side while also trying to be objective.

We do this too in our romantic relationships. When your partner is venting, you listen like a best friend. You validate their right to be irritated about the crap they had to deal with that day. You throw in a few well-timed hmms and reassuring touches. You describe a similar experience you’ve had so they don’t feel so alone.

But what if the reason your partner is frustrated is because of you?

It’s here where listening and camaraderie are replaced with defensiveness and rebuttals. At least that’s how it was for me. The more I was confronted with my bullshit, the louder the voice in my head screamed that she was ridiculous and harsh.

But, of course, it was me who was ridiculous and harsh, because I wasn’t listening.

Chances are good that your partner isn’t trying to fight. Chances are good they simply want to express a valid feeling to the person they rightfully expect to feel comfortable expressing it to.

Listening like a best friend to your partner’s frustrations even when they’re about you can feel impossible. But it just takes practice. I would know, I’ve had years of it. Courtney has had to have plenty of tough conversations with me about taking accountability, being on time, not staring at people, etc. And I’m grateful for this because it means she cares.

Again, it’s not easy, but it’s what a best friend would do.

3. The 100/0 Rule

This may sound extreme, but a relationship is not 50/50.

A relationship is 100/0.

You have to give everything and expect nothing. It’s the only way.

4. Disagreements are inevitable, arguments are optional

One day at work about 8 years ago, I was talking to a coworker I looked up to and wanted his advice.

“You know how when you’re arguing with someone and—” 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he laughed, putting his hands up. “ I don’t argue with anyone.”

I immediately wanted to argue with him. How can you go through life without arguing? Wasn’t that part of it?

Instead of voicing my confusion, I asked him what he meant.

“It’s simple,” he smiled. “I just don’t argue.”

“But what if you disagree with someone?”

He shrugged. “Then I disagree. Look, if I’m open to hearing what someone has to say, I’ll listen. But—and here’s the important part—before I jump into what I want to say, I first ask them if they’re willing to listen. If they are, cool. If they’re not, no problem. At least I didn’t waste my time talking in vain.”

This was the wildest thing I’d ever heard in my life. 

It was also a huge relief: I never have to argue with anyone again!

Who would have thought you could simply state your point, let the other person state theirs, and do this back and forth without raising your voice or becoming frustrated?

Arguing can feel natural, but it’s not. What’s natural is cooperation. What’s natural is finding common ground for the common good.

5. Yes! as a default response

In 10 years, there’s been maybe a handful of times (mostly at the beginning of our relationship, mostly involving hiking) that I’ve said no to something Courtney wanted to do together. 

Whenever she asks if I want to do something with her, my response is almost always yes! Even if I don’t have much interest in it, I say yes. And I try to be enthusiastic about it.

Want to go to the grocery store together? Hell yeah. Want to work on a 1,000-piece puzzle? Ab-so-fruitly. Want to re-re-redecorate the bathroom because the decorations have become stale and the wall color is boring and don’t I agree? The…ohhh yes, right, the wall color. Bathroom. Boring for sure. I definitely noticed. Let’s do it!

I do this for two reasons: Because I love hanging out with her and because life is offensively short. At the end of my life, whether today or tomorrow or 80 years from now, I know that I will give anything for one more car ride, one more evening routine, one more anything with her. I try my best to remember that and live by it.

6. Conserve your energy

The other day, Courtney and I were watching a show where this engaged couple was in a heated discussion, trying to get on the same page. It ended when the guy walked away saying, “I don’t have the energy for this.” All I could think was, Bro, what the hell else are you using your energy for?

Most of what we do is inessential, and we drain precious time and energy doing it.

You had the energy to follow sports updates and bet on the games, but none for a meaningful conversation with your partner? C’mon. You followed breaking news and now you’re too frazzled to greet your partner with a smile when they get home? That’s not fair.

I used to misplace my attention like this all the time. No one I knew was further along in Candy Crush than me (making me a winner and a loser at the same time).

Once I learned how to ruthlessly eliminate the inessential and be still, I grew as a person and partner.

7. Keep it playful

It’s not that serious. Be goofy and silly together. Laugh at yourself. I swear I never laugh harder than when Courtney roasts me. I even write down her roasts of me on notecards and read them later when I want a good laugh.

8. Follow through

If you say you’re going to do something, do it. And if there’s a chance you might not do it, don’t say you’re going to. Better still: just do the thing and don’t talk about it.

9. Fill your home with virtue

I almost didn’t include this one because it sounds kind of corny, but I decided it’s too important to leave out: a house filled with virtue is more beautiful than a house filled with gold.

Selflessness, transparency, honesty, laughter, spontaneity, routine, love, calm, kindness, acceptance, patience—fill your house with these things and you will have the most beautiful, joyful dwelling in the whole world. You’ll have the most beautiful, joyful relationship too.

Books read this month:

-My dad gave me his copy of A Confession by Leo Tolstoy and it’s one of the best books I’ve read. It’s answered some of the questions I’ve had for years about religion and faith. If you’re even a little curious, it’s well worth the read. And if you haven’t read his A Calendar of Wisdom, you need to!

–On Writing by C.S. Lewis. A compilation of writing advice from one of the best. My biggest takeaway: reading a book just to get to the end is vulgar. The whole point is to enjoy the book as you read. I thought about this the other day when Courtney and I planned to go for a hike and then go out to eat afterward. I was excited, but mostly about the food part. The hike was something to get through. Lewis would call this vulgarity. By thinking of food as the payoff, I was thinking about, well, the payoff. But thinking about a payoff cheapens life. There is no eventual payoff. The payoff is this moment, right now. Besides, everything we do—the stuff we like and dislike—it all passes by anyway. We’re here for a short time and then the lights go out. Don’t wish away a second of life by anticipating something else. There is no something else. This is it. Don’t forget to live.

-I first read Keep Going in 2021 and I decided to read it again because I love Austin Kleon. He posts his work on social media every day—a journal entry or a collage or a pile of vinyl records he melted in the sun—the message being that’s important to create for its own sake. He recently inspired me to start a collage journal of my own and I’m having a lot of fun with it.

–William Blake vs. The World by John Higgs. I knew nothing about William Blake before reading this, and WOW, what a phenomenal book. Tons of thought-provoking ideas on imagination. I especially loved the parts about human perception and how, outside of the human mind, we have no idea what the universe looks like. Whoa.

–David Sedaris Diaries: A Visual Compendium by David Sedaris. I’ve been a fan of David Sedaris for about 20 years now and decided to give his mostly visual book a read. I LOVED it. If you get inspired by looking through people’s journals and diaries like I do, you will love it. It’s a compilation of pictures of and passages from the diaries he’s kept throughout his life. I was inspired by the way he finds trash on the street and turns it into art. Or turns it into nothing and simply binds it in his diary as is. Because he realized, he explains, that when he sat down at his desk to write in his diary, “I could really do whatever the f— I wanted.”

Commit once and for all

Life, Philosophy / /

About a month ago, a new policy was announced at work.

It wasn’t anything crazy, but I was annoyed, and I complained to Courtney and my parents. The more I thought about it, the more miserable I made myself.

A few weeks later, I was notating Epictetus’s Enchiridion.

“You want to win at the Olympics? So do I—who doesn’t?” Epictetus said to a student. But before you jump in, reflect on what that entails: you’ll need to adopt a strict diet, a brutal exercise regimen, and submit completely to a trainer. Your ankles will likely swell. You’ll sustain injuries and swallow mouthfuls of sand. Oh and after all that you still might lose.

If, after considering everything you’ll have to do, you still want to be an Olympian…then do it wholeheartedly, he said. Don’t pause to think about it or you will end up jumping from one infatuation to the next. You’ll be like a child; one day they want to be a gladiator, the next day a musician, the next an actor, and so on. Give your pursuit sincere attention and commit with all your heart.

He then applies this lesson to life.

You claim to want serenity and freedom and peace, but are you willing to pay the price? Are you willing to change the way you eat and drink? Are you willing to put up with nights of pain? To be criticized? To forfeit status and power? Willing to moderate your desires and aversions? To be okay with getting the small end of the stick in even the tiniest matters? In a word, are you willing to live as a philosopher?

If you’re unwilling, don’t go near it, he says. Walk away. You can’t be a philosopher one day and someone else the next. You can only be one person. Make your decision, and commit once and for all.

This struck me with a force that’s hard to describe.

You say you want freedom, yet here you are, troubled.

Commit once and for all.

Every day the next week, I wrote, “Commit once and for all” on the back of my hand. I took a thick, black Expo marker and scrawled the phrase on the bathroom mirror. I needed reminders. I had been using philosophy in some parts of my life, but clearly not in others. 

One of my favorite passages from Epictetus is where he says if people truly grasped how short life is, they would never entertain miserable thoughts. He didn’t say they would never entertain a miserable thought unless something seemed unfair, or unless a situation felt overwhelming, or unless someone pissed them off. They just wouldn’t entertain those thoughts, period.

It’s important to note that he wasn’t talking about negative thinking, which we know can be used, paradoxically, to increase positivity. He was talking about thoughts that do nothing but make you feel miserable.

Epictetus spent the first 30 years of his life as a slave. One day, his master, feeling especially cruel, grabbed Epictetus’s leg and began to twist it. “If you keep doing that,” Epictetus told him, “you’re going to snap it.” The master kept twisting. Epictetus’s leg snapped. “See,” Epictetus said calmly. “I told you that would happen.” 

It’s not that Epictetus didn’t feel pain. Of course he did. But his philosophy said things outside of his control could not harm him. That his leg is broken? That is objectively true. That he’s harmed by it? That was up to him. And his commitment to his philosophy was greater than his broken leg. 

Seneca had a respiratory illness that sometimes made it hard to breathe. When it flared, he would spend days in bed, in a state of near suffocation. Writing about these experiences to his friend Lucilius, Seneca said that even though his body was in anguish, his mind was at ease. “Even while suffocating,” he reflected, “I did not stop resting serenely in brave and cheerful thoughts.” The Epicurean philosopher, Epicurus, was in excruciating pain on what he knew would be (and was) his last day on earth. Still, he wrote that he felt a “gladness of mind” by recalling pleasant memories of conversations with friends.

Like Epictetus, Seneca and Epicurus were not immune to pain. In fact, their empathetic natures probably amplified their pain at times. But here they were, nearly suffocating and dying, still committed to their philosophy, still not letting outside things harm them, still feeling “gladness of mind”. Not in a “toxic positivity” way—they weren’t smiling and saying, ‘Aw gee, shucks, isn’t this great?’—but in the contented way that comes from soberly processing negative emotions and calmly accepting what they could not control.

These were people who were committed. This is who they were; the situation wouldn’t change them.

Commit once and for all. This was my wake-up call and a reminder that I can’t pick and choose where I use philosophy. Like an Olympic athlete, I must be totally committed. 

So a policy changed at work? And? Why are you thinking about it now anyway?  It doesn’t take effect until next year. Besides, think of how lucky you are to have this job and the wonderful people you’ve met because of it.

You’ll find a way to use this to your advantage. You’ll see it’s for the best.

P.S. It turns out the new policy won’t change things that much. This brings to mind another stoic principle I had disregarded: don’t suffer before it’s necessary or you’ll suffer more than is necessary. But more on that another time.

P.P.S. Courtney woke up to my mirror reminder. She sent me this pic while I was at work, saying it had scared the shit out of her.

Books Read

-I loved The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. It’s a story about the Chicago World’s Fair, the architects who built it, and the serial killer who used it to lure his victims. What makes it even creepier is that it’s true.

–How To Do the Right Thing by Seneca was great. It’s part of the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series, a collection of books that take individual philosophers’ works and piece together writings on a narrow topic. Other books of theirs I’ve enjoyed: How to Be Free, How to Keep Your Cool, How to Be a Leader,How to Be a Bad Emperor, How to Give, How to Be Content.

-I loved Morgan Housel’s The Psychology of Money, so I preordered and read his newest book Same as Ever, a collection of stories about what doesn’t change. I found some great reminders: the better story wins, risk is what you don’t see, the magic of compounding. Other topics that made me think: the importance of imperfection, the short lifespan of competitive advantage, and the simplicity of most things (and how and why we complicate them).

-I was hesitant to read Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson because I wasn’t sure how transparent it would be. But then I saw that Isaacson referred to Musk as a man-child, and I dove right in. Wow…this is one of the best books I’ve read this year. It’s an up-close view of how one of the most wildly successful entrepreneurs operates and makes decisions. It made me see Musk in a new light. I had a hard time putting it down. A very hard time. The short chapters and loads of pictures made it a fast read too. I didn’t want it to end.

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