inspiration – Page 2 – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

On Aiming High and Coming Up ‘Short’

You’ve heard the phrase shoot for the stars you just might land on the moon, right?

It’s a great sentiment, if you’re totally chill with landing on the moon.

Problem is if you’re the type of person delusional enough to shoot for the stars, maybe landing on the moon is a disappointment.

Here me out.

As a baseball player, I was just good enough that possibly playing in the pros wasn’t that much of a delusion. Throughout high school I busted and trained and hit and threw and fielded. I never made it to the pros, so by all accounts a disappointment.

But I was a damn good high school player and would’ve been a fine college player. My problem was that I couldn’t be satisfied with being a damn good high school player, one of the 100 best in New England. It meant nothing to me.

But…had I not pushed myself to that extreme of playing professionally, had I just been happy to be a decent high school player, I doubt I would’ve been a very good high school player at all. I shot for the stars and landed on the moon. My problem was I was grossly unsatisfied with the moon.

So we need to have Major League dreams and Major League work ethic, knowing all the while that reaching that mighty pinnacle is still unlikely, but that shouldn’t stop us, because pushing ourselves to that level will make us pretty damn good.

The trick—and the rub—is being happy with the moon.

And I think I have an answer for that, but I’ll save it for tomorrow.

The End of Job Shaming Part III

By Brendan O’Meara

Okay, so this’ll be my last (I think) post for a while on Job Shaming. [Parts I and II]

You know what Day Jobs also do? They put you out into the world and in contact with people, and if you’re a writer: people are where the stories are.

Gay Talese, say what you will about him in recent years, but his advice to young writers coming out of school is to get a job driving a cab. What better way to intersect with people, real people.

I owe my first book to a retail job. There I was a double major, an MFA holder, working at a shoe store.

I was fitting a woman for a pair of running shoes. She asked me what I did besides the retail gig. I told her I was a writer and I had this book, Six Weeks in Saratoga, that I had finished and was shopping around.

She said, “I know an editor at SUNY Press and I know they’re looking for a Saratoga book.”

She gave me the woman’s email. I sent her the manuscript and…fast forward a few months…they accepted and would later publish the book.

This was lucky, but I also had done the work and was in the position to capitalize.

And it was the menial Day Job, one that I felt tons of shame over, that ultimately led to my first book. And it’s a good, little book for a 29-year-old. I’m not gonna denigrate it.

Point is, every time you punch the clock at work, you might have the opportunity of running into someone and that is likely someone you would’ve never met had you not had your Day Job out in the world.

No shame in that.

The End of Job Shaming Part I

By Brendan O’Meara

You remember that photo, right? The one of the actor Geoffrey Owens, most famous for his role on The Cosby Show, working the register at Trader Joe’s? The photo taken by someone whose very intent was to shame a working actor for having what she perceived as a low-life job?

This angered me so much, but Owens graciously took the high road. He parlayed this job shaming into many appearances on morning talk shows. He lauded his employer for taking him in, for giving him a steady paycheck while he sought work as an actor. As a result, he ended up getting more acting work. He’s always been a working actor, and sometimes a working actor has to work at a job flexible enough to accommodate his craft. It’s not prestigious, but you wanna know what else isn’t prestigious: missing the rent.

If we’re not getting job shamed by our family or by someone at a party, then we almost certainly do it to ourselves. You think I spent all this money on education and it’s led me to working a crummy retail job because I can’t get enough writing gigs. You think Well, if I was any good at this craft, would I even need a day job? Or you start playing the Competition Olympics and think Well, my heroes, those artists I so deeply admire, they don’t have to stack produce at the supermarket while I fill-in-the-blank.

The fact is, in this day of social media highlights, YOU DON’T KNOW IF THEY’RE STACKING PRODUCE OR NOT. THEY MIGHT BE, BUT THEY’RE NOT BROADCASTING IT.

There are myriad things worth unpacking here and maybe this will be the first of several micropods about Day Jobs and Job Shaming.

I can speak to this because it’s something I have felt so deeply for many, many years.

I’ll leave you with this: Day Jobs are nothing to be ashamed of. Think of it as a way that subsidizes your art. Make what you can in the time you have and stop hating yourself for it.

Start Now

By Brendan O’Meara

This morning I was riffing in my journal and my final passage lamented how much I want to do just in writing. I have so many projects in my head, written down, everywhere, and trust me, they’re all genius.

With so much I want to get to, where do I start? And for that matter, where should you start? The answer is: Start. Pass Go.

We’re not in this for the short gain, the short cut, and the low-hanging fruit. No, we’re in this for the long haul. We want to be 70, 80, 90 years old still churning out art.

Your journal entry on the eve of your eventual death should say something to the effect of, “I can’t wait to keep working on that project.”

Play the long game. You have many ideas and it’s stifling to think of them all. Honestly, most of them are likely garbage and won’t live up to the perfect ideal in your head.

Doesn’t matter. Start now. Life is long. Start now. Keep going. Please.

On Fun

By Brendan O’Meara

A fair question to ask when it comes to your vocation, especially an artistic one, is: What would this look like if this was fun?

It’s so easy to get bogged down in the mire of the work. I hear constantly how one writer complains about their agent and that this and that and the other can’t seem to get their work published.

I mean, whatever happened to doing it just because it’s fun? When you were a kid drawing who knows what, did you run and start an Etsy shop? When you wrote a poem in high school, were considering what market to sell it to?

Our egos are tied to these prestige outlets and prestige outcomes. We want to say were published in fill in the blank, but it doesn’t matter. If you land that piece in fill in the blank, you’re gonna still wake up and feel the exact same, so why not have fun with it?

Turn it loose. Enjoy yourself like you did when you were a kid.

Bowling Pins

By Brendan O’Meara

The best way to not waste the morning is to have your marching orders, so to speak, ready the night before.

I call this “setting up the bowling pins.” By having a secure nighttime routine you ensure that the morning gets off to a focused start.

By setting up your crucial tasks the night before, you enter the following day with purpose. And if you’re like me, without that purpose you’ll flounder and find ways to waste time.

Set up the bowling pins.

Go knock them down.

Tiny Revolution

By Brendan O’Meara

Nowadays our attention is taxed.

Algorithms are designed to lock us into the constant scroll.

I realize this even as I try and write/record a blog post that I hope people will read and enjoy.

But you don’t have to go too far back in time to remember the days when phones were attached to walls with spiraled cords that always got tangled.

The only ping notification was when the phone rang and you had to get up and walk to the wall and pick it up.

Mobile devices are great in so many ways, but I think employing an old-school filter to the smartphone is an act of revolution. Put the ringer on, but put it in a different room. Bring it with you in the car, but leave it in the console as you run your errands.

Once untethered, it no longer becomes the candy fix that it is, a kind of burden lifts.

This is by no means original, but it might be worth a try. You may find you’ll get more work done. Or maybe you’ll simply take pride in your tiny revolution.

Event Horizon

By Brendan O’Meara

The first ever image of a black hole was recently published. It was a cool school portrait. Smile!

It is more than 50 million light years away. It has the mass of 6.5 billion suns.

A few years ago a little chirp picked up by LIGO moved a laser the diameter of a proton that proved the existence of gravitational waves.

If it makes you feel small, it should.

But it should also make you feel lucky. Look at what we’re given. Look at you’ve been able to accomplish.

We’re so small in the cosmic scheme of this universe that we have no excuse to run from our most ambitious visions. Sure, fear is real, but when you realize how tiny we are, why be afraid? Why not start and finish a terrible book? Why not take 1,000 horrible photographs? Why not start a dozen terrible businesses? What do you have to lose?

Let the titanic size of the cosmos set you free. Let it liberate your inhibitions because this is all we’ve got. Nothing matters and everything matters all at the same time.

Please, jump, and create your own event horizon where nobody can escape the great pull of your gravity.

Watch Your Words

By Brendan O’Meara

I’ve kept a journal for over 20 years. I can’t envision a time without one. I recommend it if you don’t.

But something happens if you’re being honest. Oftentimes, you write down nasty stuff. Nasty self commentary. The kind that reeks and stinks. You don’t want to lie to your journal! If you can’t be honest with your journal, than where can you?

But what if you start believing the bile you’ve habitually spilled into your journals? What you if instead of bloodletting, you imprint a negative story that effectively weighs you down with iron boots?

James Victore in his wonderful book Feck Perfuction writes:

Stop deprecating all over yourself.
We pre-crap on ourselves so others won’t. We joke about how fat we are while trying on new clothes, or pooh-pooh our talents before sharing our talent. … Self-deprecation is healthy when it means being humble or witty, but continually calling yourself a loser becomes self-sabotage. … Words have power. The problem with repeating negative mantras to yourself is that you start to believe them. Then others believe them. Watch your words.

Negative self-talk has ruined the past 20 years of my life and I’m working on that. I’ve noticed that changing my language in my journals has helped. But instead of lamenting over something and dwelling and wallowing, I reframe it as a gift. Nobody listens to my podcast? Great, I can make it better. Got another rejection? That’s an opportunity to improve. Drank too many beers and ate too much cake? Today’s a new day to eat clean and drink water and get back on the path..

Point is every obstacle is an opportunity. And the way we frame it in private will manifest in public.

20 Minutes

By Brendan O’Meara

The entirety of a book, a painting, a podcast, it’s all too overwhelming. Too overwhelming to start. So what do you do?

Often, you do nothing or something almost as bad as nothing: You start many things and never finish them.

The answer? Give yourself 20 minutes today to work on that thing. Set a timer. Remove all distractions.

Work for 20 minutes and be done.

What you’ll find is that you’ll get hooked on the habit and you’ll want to come back. And that’s what we need from you. We need you to show up.

There are 1,440 minutes in a day. I promise you you can find 20 minutes. It doesn’t have to be good. But give it 20 minutes. It’s all it takes and those minutes add up and before you know it, there’s a body of work. At the end of five days you will have worked for 100 minutes!

Go on. Give it 20 minutes. Ready, set, go!

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