When I started this newsletter six years ago, I made a deal with myself:
Always write only about what genuinely grips me.
Which means doing everything I can not to write about everything else. That is, about the billion phenomena, events, and things I "should" write about — what's popular, sensible, correct, safe, profitable, and so on.
In practice, this means waiting for the "click" — half an hour, an hour, sometimes two. All that time I'm in serious discomfort, digging through a pile of thoughts, images, dreams, and quotes, muttering over and over:
“No. Not it. Wrong. Hmm… yes, that’s good, but no… it doesn’t grab me.”
The Critic in my head chimes in:
"This is so stupid. All this effort for nothing. Just make a content plan and crank it out. Write what's guaranteed to hook everyone."
I can’t. Or rather, I don’t want to. I’ve already had enough of that. “Make the client happy.” Ads, promotions, marketing. "The client is always right."
My "target audience" now is an unknown part of myself. Or more accurately, I am a part of it. Jung called the Self the deep center that unites consciousness and the unconscious.
We work in tandem — I search and write, and the Self accepts or rejects.
That might sound selfish, if not for one thing.
Jung believed the psyche of the individual is rooted in the archetypal structures of the collective unconscious. Eliade wrote about a single pattern of Being that manifests in the Cosmos, in society, and in the individual.
We are like individual mushrooms connected underground by one mycelium.
That explains why my essays sometimes resonate with you. When I do my job well, I touch a point of authenticity we share.
It's worth trying again and again for that — don't you think?
Sincerely yours,
-Alexander
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