Trying Again…
A series attempting to cut through some conversational weeds.
3. Pretention
Over the past few days, I’ve been revising the copy on pages throughout Open Doors; I’ve noticed that is, so often, written in a way that carries an air of self-importance—and probably something much wider.
At times, even changing a word or two in an intro to the “What I’m Hearing” page, for example, felt like stripping away obscurity and contradiction. It’s as if I was trying to create some highbrow literary journal instead of what it is: a blog. “.blog” is even in the URL—what did I really think I was doing?
None of this is to say that I’m putting less personal value into Open Doors. Quite the opposite, actually. All I really want to do is bring clarity into my thinking both for myself and others.
A change on the “explorations” page makes the distinction obvious.
Original line: Original commentary, criticism, and philosophy.
Revised line: Long-form commentary, criticism, and conceptualization.
This is not to say that my content isn’t “original,” but, especially when combined with a word like “philosophy,” the phrasing came off as pretentious. I still read good books and listen to smart people, of course, but writing in that way felt like projecting something like a superiority complex.
Anyway, that felt like something worth articulating.
2. Being Inarticulate
A few nights ago, two of my closest friends came over to eat, drink, and talk about any number of subjects—current events, morality, history, religion, art, music, and more, all interspersed with banter no one but us would ever care about.. Though there are relatively minor disagreements, the three of us are pretty well aligned on core principles. Plus, we talk daily via a running group chat.
This is worth mentioning because we can drop sentences halfway and others can, for the most part, either finish the thought or understand the point. It’s also easy for any one person to talk for a 10-minute stretch without losing their train of thought and remaining mostly articulate throughout. There’s little need to explain references—it’s easy to get back on track otherwise—and there is always significant charity granted when it sounds like someone is digressing unnecessarily—they’ll bring the thought around to something like a point.
With my parents, though, I must sound like I’m coming from a different planet. Maybe I’m being unfair, but, especially with my dad, we have different references—most of which require years of content, reading, or experience.
From there, two problems emerge—at least for me. First, I’ll have trouble figuring out where to start or stop an explanation of a reference or concept. I can’t be certain of how they feel when I go on a longer digression, but I often leave feeling as if I’ve been either demeaning or, at best, added confusion.
Second, if I think some digression is necessary, I find myself stumbling over words or concepts because (and maybe this was one of the problems with “How My Mind Changed”) I’ll go on a tangent off a tangent to explain what I mean. The end result is that I come off sounding like I don’t know what I’m talking about—literally—and I rarely make it back to what I was trying to get across in the first place.
The other day, there was a fairly banal example of this. One of my parents mentioned Russell Brand. Immediately, my alarm bells start ringing, I stop listening, and I fall victim to what has been dubbed “mind reading”—the idea that someone can predict what another is about to say and forms notions based on the prediction, not what they were necessarily going to say. Then, it gets worse. Brand is referenced in the context of a conversation he had on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
At this point, my mind is off to the races. I call Brand a “wacko.” This is followed by a stream of negativity about Brand and Rogan that is devoid of any real context or information. To be sure, Brand is definitely an out-there figure who mixes his metaphors, has a juvenile worldview, and isn’t a productive or coherent thinker—though the man has a talent for stringing words into fun stream-of-consciousness paragraphs. However, he’s relatively harmless. Especially when compared with so many others in Podcastistan.
But, instead of engaging with the ideas my parents—not Russell Brand—are about to bring up, I launch into an inarticulate flurry of ad hominem attacks. Finally, I recommend an episode of the Decoding the Gurus podcast where they cover Brand. My mom writes it down in earnest because she actually wants to know what I’m talking about.
Is that really the best I can do? Recommend a single podcast episode—from 2020 no less—and expect my point to be made?
So, mom, yes. Listen to that podcast, but realize I’ve realized that I made a mistake from the outset.
The burden isn’t on them. If I’m going to solve “goal three,” I have to put in the work. Part two, here, explains some of the issues on my end. In part three, I’ll hopefully take another step toward a solution.
1. Getting Restarted
When I created Open Doors, there were two main goals. First, to build a context for myself based on everything I’m consuming:: podcasts, journalism, fiction, nonfiction, and any other media. I wanted to compile a network of references that I could refer back to. I wanted to keep track of my thinking. Second, write more—essays, fiction, and even a bit of poetry.
Though the beginning was promising—I wrote one long-ish essay and several shorter pieces as well as revising one of my better works of fiction—Open Doors has fallen off the map. I still update the lists—fiction, nonfiction, and podcast—even the shortest writing has basically stopped. There are several pieces started or outlined in my Google Drive, but those don’t count.
Those two goals are inward facing. Open Doors was and is essentially a utility for my own purposes.
However, I think there is a smaller, though just as important, goal: to explain to family and friends where my thinking on various subjects currently stands. When I write “family and friends,” I think I’m mostly talking about my parents. When I initially wrote the essay, “How My Mind Changed,” it was for this explicit purpose. Anyone can read the full essay, but the gist is that, since my MS diagnosis, my politics and ethics began a radical transformation.
It’s a good essay I think, but it didn’t accomplish the goal. And, rightly so. Who am I to think that a single essay could distill years of change let alone convince people as emotionally close as parents that the change wasn’t random, or happenstance, or just “growing up?”
Three objectives—minimal success.
It’s time for a reset. I’ll get back to my other essays, start writing fiction again, and generally make progress toward my set of goals.
As far as answering the question, “what happened to our son?” Well, subsequent parts of “Trying Again” can hopefully approach some modicum of success.
