When you’re writing for yourself and don’t care if other people read it or not. Or buy or not.
When you go where you want to go for lunch, reviews be damned.
When you wear the shoes you want to wear because they’re comfy, whether or not they are fashionable. (Hint: fashionable is the opinion of others, an opinion most often created commercially).
Twitter again has been sobering. At a superficial level (which is all that I can see) it is 100% marketing, 100% of the time, by 100% of the users. Only some of the marketing is commercial. But all of the communications are marketing messages.
Ok let’s say 90% marketing. There is a small and visible element of apparently sincere, one-to-one care and attention. One person sincerely caring on a non-performative level for another person. But even that is suspect: is the personal connection sincere or manipulative? Who knows.
I am on Twitter . . . why? Same reason as everyone else. Get followers. Why? Make money. Why? Money is good. Why? Uhhhh.
I am on Twitter . . . why? Because my brain wants a treadmill to run on so it feels the appearance of accomplishment, which is so much easier to reach than marching through the drudgery to real accomplishment.
I am no better than everyone else.
But this is back to the headline. Life is simple when . . . you don’t care about the analytics. The praise. The payoff. Just do something, because it feels like the right thing to do.
Life is only real then, when I am.
(If I can coin a phrase, haha).
Now. A hotel room in Milan at mid-day, looking through the window at the Pirelli Tower outlined against a grey sky, with Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto Number 1 in D Minor playing quietly on my iPad. The window is open and the cold winter air streams into the room and feels crisp and invigorating.
God is alive. Magic is afoot.
(To coin a phrase, haha).