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Episode 324: Chris Solomon
253 Plays2 years ago
Chris Solomon is a contributing editor to Outside Magazine.
We talk about his work for GQ, Outside, and freelancing in general.
Sponsor: Athletic Greens
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Social: @CNFPod
Show notes/newsletter: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Host's New Role with Athletic Brewing
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh hey there CNFers. Can I say something here atop the show that I'm pretty stoked about? I got approved to be a brand ambassador for athletic brewing. They make my favorite NA or near beers.
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Speaker
I'll soon have a coupon code and a referral link if you want to like experiment with it and try it, maybe get a discount or something. But I just wanted to share that because I dig what they make. And I'm not above having some alcoholic beer, but it's nice to know you can keep the good times alive without waking up the next morning in a puddle of your own shame if you follow me.
00:00:38
Speaker
Anyway, stay tuned for that. I'm just excited about it. I don't get any money. I get some discounts or whatever. But it's just something that I kind of, I'm excited about. And I think it's, if you like beer as much as I do, but you don't always want to be hammered or hungover, it's a great option. So in any case, stay tuned, all right? Is this a great podcast or is it cake?
00:01:12
Speaker
It's a joke that endlessly cracks me up. I think I'm the only one. I have to be the only one. Maybe me and Mikey Day. Maybe Mikey Day would think it's funny. Maybe. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
Introduction to the Creative Nonfiction Podcast
00:01:29
Speaker
Doesn't matter how you see an effort. This is the Creative Nonfiction podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Meara, the avatar of the frustrated, disgruntled writer. How are you?
00:01:41
Speaker
You okay? I wonder sometimes if maybe that's my role in this world. It's not to succeed in being a writer, but to succeed as someone trying to succeed by failing at a writing career. Someone to articulate how crummy we all feel when things are going horribly, horribly awry. But you know who does have his shit together? It's Chris Solomon. There's something to be said for quality of life because this job isn't about the money.
00:02:09
Speaker
Sing it, man. Sing it. Chris is a contributing editor to Outside Magazine. What's a contributing editor? You'll find out, because I had no idea what it was, whose work has appeared in Wired, GQ, and so many other places. I'm going to have some links to some of his stories, specifically the latest one for Outside Magazine that prompted this invite on the pod, and this GQ essay he had about his mother and father.
00:02:36
Speaker
You can find that at BrendanOmeridaka. Hey, hey. When I think of writing non-fiction, it's writers like Chris and Gloria Liu from episode 300 fame who stand out. I like outdoor sport writing, that immersive stuff where part of the pay is in fact, or the fact that you get to do shit you love. And maybe that is grist for the mill because it's all copy, baby. Olives for the oil. Oh my God, stop, Bio. This...
00:03:05
Speaker
is why
Chris Solomon's Latest Works
00:03:06
Speaker
you fail. He's at ChrisASolomon on Twitter and ChrisSolomon.net is his website for a more expansive array of the work he's done and he's done quite a bit of work. And the recent piece he wrote for Outside Magazine has this for an opening graph, okay?
00:03:28
Speaker
A few years ago, I crossed an unseen boundary and entered the land of middle age. The shift came slowly, then abruptly, and there I was, at forty-eight, the new guy in a place whose inhabitants talked about poor sleep, unfaithful bowels, and watching soccer instead of playing it.
00:03:45
Speaker
I adapted to these strange ways with an ease that surprised me, until I no longer recognized myself. Once, every morning, had glowed bright with heroic possibilities. Now, I felt like I was immersed in a tub of cooling bath water. Nothing was wrong, exactly. Everything was just… less. Including myself. And I was scared.
00:04:11
Speaker
And that's why I sent Chris an electronic mail message and said, let's talk man, let's talk it out because life has made me soft and frustrated and cozy and I want to be hard, less frustrated, spartan-esque, ascetic.
00:04:30
Speaker
I want to push my limits. Shit, I want to find those limits. Show notes in the up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter at brendanamerit.com. Keep the conversation going on Twitter at cnfpod and if you link up to the show I'll give you those digital fist bumps.
00:04:46
Speaker
So you could also head over to Apple Podcasts and consider a rating and a written review. Those go a real long way towards validating the enterprise for the way we're seeing effort. We're up to 120. I'd love to see some more written ones, but hell, that's awesome for this little podcast that could.
00:05:05
Speaker
Uh, stay tuned for my world famous parting shot about what I don't even know yet. You'll just have to wait and listen, friend, cause it's high time we riff here in the Hellfire Club, that is, the creative non-fiction podcast.
Benefits of Freelancing
00:05:30
Speaker
days too, given just how freelancers can be a bit more nimble and geographically agnostic. How have you found that, how is your freelancing and the journalism you do, how has that been affected by getting into a less metropolitan area? I do lots of travel writing than I used to. I used to do quite a bit of travel writing and I
00:05:57
Speaker
Since I don't travel that much for work anymore. It's not a problem. You know, I've got a good internet connection You know the phone connections good and I can get over to the Seattle Airport in You know three and a half hours if I need to I can get this Spokane Airport in three hours and so it's Yeah, it's really not a problem and I don't really get on a plane that often anyway anymore. So I
00:06:25
Speaker
In short, it's worked out really well and I can knock off a work and go for a trail run in five minutes, which there's something to be said for quality of life because this job isn't about the money. Exactly right.
00:06:43
Speaker
say, you know, given that you're able to kind of zip out and go for a nice trail run, like just for the for the people out there might want to visualize where it is you run and kind of the landscape you're in, like how would you describe your, you know, your trail in the ones that you routinely run? Yeah, well, it's on kind of on the east side of the North Cascades, a little bit in the rain shadow of the of the Cascade Mountains. So we, I mean, we still get
00:07:10
Speaker
We still get plenty of snow and, and stuff in the winter and, and so enjoy winter sports. But then, um, in the summer, it's kinda, it's, it's sort of where big mountains meet high desert, um, kind of, kind of almost so a little, a little more rolling hills and mountainous than say, bend or again, but kind of the people are more familiar with something like that.
00:07:36
Speaker
So it's where sort of pine trees meet sagebrush. They're a nice country. And yeah, just a little slower pace, you know, got myself some chickens. And yeah, and then just kind of, you know, sometimes at the computer, because nice sunny days versus in Seattle, it's pretty easy to just hunker down with another cup of good coffee and, you know, and hunker in the cold rain. But I'm out here, it's pretty sunny a lot, so.
Nature's Impact on Creativity
00:08:06
Speaker
Yeah, speaking of the wonderful distraction that it can be to have the outdoors at your fingertips or at your feet, Earl Swift, who often contributes to Outside Magazine and is the author of several amazing books, he lives basically in the shadow of the Appalachian Trail, if that makes any sense. But he's on the app trail in Virginia, so almost every day,
00:08:32
Speaker
He goes for a little like five mile jump, like two and a half miles out, two and a half back. And that's like a very important part of his creative process and a way to stay refreshed. You know, oftentimes when our our hip flexors are bent at 90 degrees and we're at a desk all day long. So I imagine that having those kind of trails and that kind of scenery at your disposal is very recharging and invigorating. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's just I mean, you obviously one can get can recharge anywhere.
00:09:01
Speaker
But it's really nice to just be able to get up from the desk and be moving in a couple of minutes. That's always just been really something I value a great deal. And so to be able to do it here where, you know, in an area I really enjoy is really satisfying. And it was just getting really hard to do it in Seattle where you couldn't get
00:09:25
Speaker
you know, some of the parts I like, you know, what used to take five minutes and took, you know, to 30 minutes, 40 minutes to get over, you know, across town and stuff, or much less to get to the foothills of the Cascades. And that was just part of my frustration with living in that city that I still have a lot of affection for. Just change can be hard for those of us who've been watching it, just as it was hard for the people who came before me, I imagine.
00:09:53
Speaker
I haven't gotten up there yet, but I imagine you've been there quite a bit, and it's one of the least trafficked national parks, is Cascade National Park. Have you been there and frequented that park quite a bit in your time in Seattle? Yeah, I spent a fair amount of time in North Cascade National Park, and I think the reason it often is said to be so little traffic is just that there's not that many ways into it, except on foot.
00:10:22
Speaker
Like many places, it gets kind of nibbled at the edges, but people don't venture in very far. Though that's, you know, like everything right now, especially since the pandemic, that's changing. And so you see a lot more people than you used to. But by and large, you can still get out there and have a quiet experience. If you're a little savvy and you choose when you go, you can
00:10:48
Speaker
I was out there. I was out, I mean, not in the park, but I was just out, you know, for a run yesterday and chose wisely and I was all by myself, which was great.
Role of a Contributing Editor
00:10:56
Speaker
Over the years, I've always, you see these things like so-and-so is a contributing editor to whatever magazine and you're a contributing editor to outside. And what does it mean to be a contributing editor? I think the answer is it depends. I think that title can come
00:11:20
Speaker
with different things, depending on the publication. At outside, and I don't say this too snarkily, it's a title. It doesn't come with anything. I think it just is a bit of an honorific that says, hey, we have a relationship with you. We value what you do. You've written a fair amount for us and you continue to
00:11:45
Speaker
The title specifically didn't come with any money, to put it bluntly. I think for some other publications, maybe like the New York Times Magazine, you'll see people that it says contributing writer. I'm not for sure, but I think that might be more of a contractual relationship. That said, I was a contract writer for Outside Magazine for about three years as well.
00:12:15
Speaker
That wasn't like on the masthead. I called myself a contract writer as well, because literally I had a contract with them to write a certain number of words and articles a year. And so I was a contributing editor who did have a contract. So in short, I mean, it's a kind of a mushy term that doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it goes on the resume and I put it in emails to people. Yeah.
00:12:40
Speaker
Yeah, in reading John McPhee's draft number four about all his craft essays on writing, even the term staff writer at the New Yorker, he kind of said what you just said. It's kind of this nebulous term that is basically just a freelance title. But it does sound a little, it sounds like it has more heft than it actually does, but it's more like a freelance agreement. Yeah, that was surprising when I think I first discovered that in that book.
00:13:06
Speaker
Because staff in other, at other publications, staff writer does mean something. It does mean that you have some kind of serious relationship. The New Yorker has, I think, kind of an odd take on it that way. But I think that there is no money definitely changing hands monthly or every two weeks.
00:13:31
Speaker
They do try to get them work as a result, and I think the only relationship seems to be that they are the preferred writers for them. But yeah, it was surprising to me that they use that term, but it doesn't mean a contractual relationship necessarily.
00:13:51
Speaker
That is odd. Yeah, it almost strikes me as more like there's a bunch of people who may or may not be salaried, but they're like in the bullpen and they're like, okay, we're going to call in the lefty now for this particular story.
00:14:09
Speaker
go to them for what do you have for ideas because you know we trust you and you've done this for X amount of years like so what's on your play like what ideas excite you okay go go go Patrick Ryan Keith like go chase it. Yeah and some of them and I'm speaking a little out of school here I don't I don't know how some of these work but I you know I do know New York Times magazine some of those others they do they do have some of their writers they have a certain number of words they try to
00:14:40
Speaker
contract with or get their writers to do each year. And, you know, like that came up recently when it's kind of a long story, but like they wanted to throw a story idea to another writer because they needed to kind of get, they need to get those writers to do that number of words each year because they're paying them that they're essentially on contract to do a certain number of words as a contributing writer or something.
00:15:08
Speaker
They want to get them to fulfill that contract. Just as a freelancer who isn't one of them, it can be a little challenging because they're gobbling up a bunch of the words.
00:15:22
Speaker
And, you know, we kind of brought up McPhee and I brought up Patrick Wright and Keith just in passing here. But what were what who are some writers that you that you've maybe read when you were coming up and like really developing your chops as a writer and a reader who you really wanted to model?
00:15:40
Speaker
We know, I mean, you did mention McPhee and maybe it's a little bit of a cliche, but I've read a bunch of his stuff and I really have admired it a lot and liked a great deal of it. So he certainly has been one. And then I've read a fair bit of Ian Frazier as well, whose work I also really like. I like how kind of smart it is and how
00:16:05
Speaker
He's got a, you know, both him and McPhee have this really nice kind of understated sense of humor, which I really enjoyed. And I like with both of them how much homework they do, but they try to wear it kind of lightly. And so I think those have been, you know, and then, you know, I did read a lot of sort of the classic sort of magazine writers like Joseph Mitchell and stuff, who I think made a big,
00:16:35
Speaker
impression on me. I will confess, I'm not as well read as some other magazine writers. I like to, I tend to read more books, embarrassingly, perhaps, than magazine articles, because I just, I just always really loved long, long stories. But, but those guys have, have been have been big influences on me. You know, it's funny, I was thinking about this question the other day, you'd asked me before we talked about like,
00:17:02
Speaker
who else sort of influenced you early on? And I had maybe, I don't know if there's a cop-out to that question, but it's also a very genuine response is that, I've thought about this a bunch in the last year or so,
Early Encouragement in Writing
00:17:19
Speaker
is that one of the biggest influences, Brendan, was not necessarily writers at all, but it was like my parents and especially my father,
00:17:32
Speaker
And, but then also my very first writing instructors, you know, John Feinstein was a, when I was at Duke university, he taught a seminar, um, the sports writer, John Feinstein. And then also I took a fiction writing, a basic fiction writing class with a, with a great fiction writer named Clyde Edgerton. And what they all had in common was they just had boundless
00:18:00
Speaker
enthusiasm for young writers. And what was remarkable about that is they had boundless enthusiasm, given that I didn't give them much to be enthusiastic about. You know, and like, but like, but I think about this all the time, that like, like, what kind of shit was I showing them? And yet they still
00:18:28
Speaker
they still were supportive and they still saw like the excitement that I had about doing this. Like I found something really interesting in writing and they saw the most meager spark that probably wasn't going to go anywhere. And they just constantly were supportive and they constantly were encouraging. And what a gift that was for these people who
00:18:57
Speaker
I admired and who were in positions to to just kill someone's dream, right? And and they and they and they didn't and they just and they were like, keep going, keep working harder. And like, I've seen I've looked back and seen some of that crap I wrote and it just just drag, you know, just terrible stuff. But like they but they didn't they didn't judge it. They they just said they just kept encouraging and and like
00:19:27
Speaker
I think about that all the time. People can tell you later what's wrong with your stuff. But what you need at the beginning, and I feel like what people like me need to do as we get a little older is be that well of encouragement to other people and to younger people. Because they're going to get plenty of criticism. There's no lack of abundance of that as people get older.
00:19:55
Speaker
But to have that kind of support and excitement about writing and journalism when they're young is just tremendous. And I think that's one of the things that kept me going and to get a little better. So anyway, that's kind of a very long-winded response to your question.
00:20:13
Speaker
Well, I think that's wonderful. And what's even worse sometimes than maybe getting criticism, like criticism is great, and especially when it's constructive, as you, say, leave the safe confines of university and you're putting work out there and then you just hear crickets or nothing at all, you know, into the endless void of an editor's inbox and you're just like,
00:20:38
Speaker
I don't know. Is this bad? Did they not see it? Did they see it and not care? And they just don't have the time to reply? That to me is almost worse than having someone criticize the work because sometimes you just don't know. Am I bad or are they busy? Without feedback, you don't know where the deficiency is. And so people taking the time to stop and think about it and respond and then also to be encouraging. As I was thinking about this stuff again, I was thinking,
00:21:07
Speaker
the popular word these days is privilege. And it's true. I mean, I had tremendous privilege to have these caring parents and then to be able to go to a school that, you know, where I got this kind of attention and stuff. And I never deny that. I mean, it was a tremendous gift. But I feel like that really helped me get going and then, you know, get other opportunities.
00:21:34
Speaker
And, you know, and got me excited to then keep trying and keep getting better. And, yeah, that spark, you know, maybe start to try to catch fire a little bit, so.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah, you mentioned your father and that essay you wrote for GQ a couple years ago was brilliant. I was so glad you shared that with me and I read that. It was just such an incredibly touching essay and he was a very musical person, played a lot of piano and you said you had the great
Father's Influence on Creativity
00:22:09
Speaker
great privilege of having supportive parents and I imagine that his playing music and your mother singing that really that must have informed you in some way as you became a creative person and a writer yourself. Interesting family, a complicated family. I'm trying to write some more about it right now but yeah very, my father in particular, very creative. He was an army colonel who put on musicals and wrote music and
00:22:38
Speaker
A family friend recently told me he once made it rain inside a theater. Just a really creative guy. But yeah, he really encouraged, really encouraged creativity in us. So he's very, he was very happy to see me do some writing because he enjoyed, he enjoyed writing as well as part, you know, writing music lyrics and things like that. So my, my older sister became a writer of a sort as well. She had, she had been a,
00:23:08
Speaker
freelance writer for the Washington Post in college, and for sports, and then kind of stringing, and then, and now works as an executive at NBC Sports. And so, yeah, I mean, he, I think he was, I think he really enjoyed seeing his kids pursue some things that, you know, obviously, one person can't do everything, but in another life, I think he would have liked to have done some of the things we did. So he kind of, he loved to live vicariously through his kids.
00:23:38
Speaker
Oh, that's great, because sometimes that living vicarious through kids, and I'm thinking specifically of athletics, can be incredibly toxic and can push you in quite literally the opposite direction. Or the parent harbors some degree of resentment, being like, ah, shit, they're doing this cool thing, and I'm going to kind of, I don't know if they give me their stuff to read, I'm going to like shit all over it and make him feel like crap. So that's great that they were supportive for that.
00:24:06
Speaker
Yeah, no, he was very supportive in the latter. It was a little complicated growing up because we were not maybe the athletes. We're all reasonably athletic people, but we're not by no means gifted. I come from a very type A family, and I think it was the
00:24:29
Speaker
I think my father was of the mind that if you put your nose head down and you work hard, you can do whatever you want, which is a certain way of viewing the world. And it works in many instances, but it doesn't necessarily work for athletics. And I think we disappointed him repeatedly. You don't just win a race because you train harder than other people.
00:24:58
Speaker
because other people are training pretty hard as well. So anyway, that's a whole longer topic, but it was a good job, all in all. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. Listen, you've probably heard of these guys and I have yet to try this product, but what I dig about them is that they're plant-based, which is important to me. Otherwise, this would be a non-starter. With one delicious scoop, you get 75. Wow.
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Writing Personal Essays
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00:26:41
Speaker
There's a definitive limit to your people's talent, especially athletically. We're born on certain athletic and genetic bases, and we can push that as far as it can go, but when you brush up against someone who is truly gifted, whether it be that baseball or basketball, it's just like, oh, you're up against a different class of human, and they're just like,
00:27:05
Speaker
when you when you brush up against if you're lucky enough to it's like oh wow that is what that's a freak that's what it takes to run sub two and a half hour marathons or dunk a basketball or throw a ball from deep right field on a b-line to home plate and you're like okay that's just a it's just a different species yeah yeah I mean there's just some natural gifts you know Dom yeah yeah you know better beer to max and other things and so it's yeah
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah, I could go on and on. I'm trying to work on stuff related to that. Anyway. Well, with the GQ essay about your parents and your father falling ill to Parkinson's, what was the challenge for you as a reporter reporting on yourself and your family? Well, I written about my dad before, for runners, world, years before, but I wanted to
00:28:04
Speaker
I'd never really, I'd never, my mom is sort of the quiet hero of our family as she probably, as a mother who probably is for many people's families. And as I watched the end of my parents' marriage, as my father circled the drain with Parkinson's disease, and my mother taking care of him, I realized I wanted to write about my mom up there. And I wanted to try to capture, it occurred to me one day, and I don't know why it took
00:28:32
Speaker
years of watching this awful, kind of loving spectacle of the end and her caring for him. It finally occurred to me that I should write about this, but it is a weird experience to go home and start reporting on your own family. And I hadn't done that before.
00:29:01
Speaker
in that way where I would, and I only kind of talked to my mom about it after I'd basically been doing it for a while. So it felt, you could talk about this a little bit, it felt a little bit almost, duplicitous isn't the right word, but it felt like I was doing something, that I was hiding something, but I would watch all day what was going on in the house
00:29:32
Speaker
and the tremendous care she was taking from my father and the tremendous abuse she took from my father who was suffering from a dementia induced by Parkinson. It was just awful stuff, this proud, great guy just falling to pieces. And then I would go back in the guest room and I would write and I would take note. And it was a strange kind of experience, but it was a way also to pay attention
00:30:00
Speaker
and to process it, and all sorts of therapy words. And then I tried to write about it, and I eventually told my mom what I was doing, and she sounded very hesitant. She's a person of a certain age where you just don't even talk about this stuff. But then I showed it to her, and I think she was quietly pleased with it, despite how difficult it was.
00:30:29
Speaker
But, you know, but of course, I was not, I'm of the mind, like, look, this is my family. I'm never, I'm not going to publish and talk about something that I don't, and I'm not comfortable with showing it to them. I mean, my, I owe my family, I owe my mom everything. And so I was not going to try and go behind her back. So I wanted her to read it before I ever published it. And she read it.
00:30:55
Speaker
you know, and soaked it all up. I think she even made a correction or two to it. And so, yeah, that's what I did. But I wanted to, you know, hear with this major event in our family's life. And I, you know, in my life too, you know, my dad and I are pretty close. And so I wanted to try and write about it. You know, there's a friend of mine has a great quote that he always says from the wonderful author who wrote
00:31:25
Speaker
the book, the screenplay that you've got mail, you know, but the quote is just, it's all copy, you know, which is, you know, which is the, you know, the phrase, which is the copy, you know, being all material for writing your whole life is and that might sound kind of mercenary. But I think if you're a writer, or if you write, if you're a certain kind of writer, it's true, like everything you experience,
00:31:54
Speaker
is something potentially, is something you're gonna, you could use. And I felt like, and then it's often the best, it's often the best, most heartfelt, most sincere work you can do. And I feel like that was one of the pieces I've done that I'm most proud of, because it feels like you can write about yourself and your family and things like that you understand that are most close to better than you can write about a scientist in the field.
00:32:23
Speaker
So anyway, this is a really long way of saying it was a hard story to do. It took months to write. You know, I rewrote it a couple times, but it was a really, really satisfying story. Those essays have been the most satisfying things I've done in my career, and ironically, they're not straight journalism.
00:32:42
Speaker
to the point you made about you know it's all it's all copy you know I have a just in my notes here I wanted to ask you about just the the nature of always you know turning life experiences into into story or turning life into story you know be it this you know very personal essay for GQ or even the the piece that you recent piece you wrote for
00:33:04
Speaker
outside magazine and and it seems like you're you're always attuned to that you know be you might write about it so you're always like what notebook is always in hand so to speak so at what point did you were you cognizant of that is just let that life is copy and that you were like you know I'm just always gonna be attuned to the potential of writing you know taking this personal experience in a distilling it into something that's artful I think there's different kinds of writers right I mean I have a friend who's one
00:33:34
Speaker
more than one Pulitzer Prize, an amazing, amazing writer, more sensitive to the world and to other people than I will ever be. And he never writes about his life or himself. It's always about other issues and social issues and justice issues and stuff. That's amazing. That's what he does. There's a dozen other kinds of writers. One thing I've just realized is
00:34:02
Speaker
over the course of the last 15 years is like, you know, they did one essay and then another. I was like, well, these, I like writing all kinds of stuff, but like things that have a personal element, especially full on kind of personal essays are, I find incredibly satisfying because they're, they're really hard. And if they work and they often don't, and I have 10 of them in the drawer that I've never finished,
00:34:31
Speaker
But that happens. But if they work, then I come away and I've understood something new about myself and about the world, which I find incredibly satisfying. And the third thing is that, well, maybe three or four things. I mean, I find that they offer an avenue to write creatively in a way that some of the work that I've done,
00:35:02
Speaker
And so, you know, I've been a newspaper reporter, I've been a business writer, I've done all sorts of kinds of stuff. And often, there's not room to write incredibly creative. I mean, just information has to be conveyed. You know, and sometimes as a freelance writer, I sometimes feel like a glorified bricklayer, like just putting together stacks of information, sometimes with a slightly creative filler.
00:35:31
Speaker
And that's not, you know, and that's important, that kind of work. I'm not denigrating it, but like I got into the job because I really like writing in part. I mean, you can get into this job for all kinds of reasons, but that always floated my boat. And I think what I like about the essays is like trying to explore different things
00:35:58
Speaker
and be able to say them in kind of memorable ways. And I think there's more opportunity to do that more frequently throughout the piece in personal pieces.
Creative Expression in Essays
00:36:13
Speaker
And so I found myself doing more and more of them in the last several years. So I've probably gotten up to maybe having done about a dozen. And I just find them really satisfying.
00:36:24
Speaker
And, and other people could disagree and that's great. Um, you know, we don't, if we all did the same thing, it would be pretty boring. Um, Mark Twain code about differences of opinion is what makes worse races. Um, so, um, but so I'm not sure if that as usual, I lose the question, but, uh, but, but I think those are the reasons why I've, I've been drawn more and more to personal. Personal things or like even for instance,
00:36:54
Speaker
I wrote this recent piece in the May-June issue of Outside Magazine. And I've been wrestling a lot with running problems, running the lifelong passion of mine. I'm also wrestling a great deal with getting older. And I had heard about this great trip to go run through the Alps. And, you know, it seemed impossibly difficult and impossibly far to go do something like that, this nine-day trip.
00:37:24
Speaker
with incredible amounts of vertical relief and distance. And I thought, you know, that's sort of a travel story, but like what's it really about for me? It's really a story for me about like, you know, this is kind of a midlife crisis story for me, except I'm not rich. I'm not going to go buy a Porsche Cayenne.
00:37:47
Speaker
You know, I'm not going to go have an affair. I'm not even married. I guess I can't have an affair. Um, but, uh, launch your own tequila brand. Um, you know, but, but, but this, what is the real story here? You know, I, so I tried to make it a little more than just a travel story. It's a story about a guy who's kinda, kinda struggling a bit in a couple of ways, but like, maybe, you know, I know running doesn't solve everything, but boy, being able to run far and healthily through beautiful country with friends, you know, at a certain age,
00:38:17
Speaker
you know, that would go a long way for me to feel I'm pretty good about life. And, and so it kind of framed it that way. And so it, it added a satisfying for me way to talk about, you know, what otherwise is, you know, on day one, we did this one day we did this, you know, day three, it was hard, you know, which otherwise can feel a little bit like laying those bricks. So yeah, I guess that's another long winded response.
00:38:44
Speaker
Well, I think in nonfiction what can be really hard when you're doing more third-person reporting is that it's hard to reach a certain level of interiority with those characters. And that's what's so great about fiction and novels is that you can imagine the interior landscape of the characters.
00:39:06
Speaker
So with these personal stories, instead of it just being beads on a string of you day one of this run, you're able to overlay your own interiority, which is what gives such depth and heft and the animating force of a piece of this nature. And I think that's the pull too, because we have access to interiority, where it's very hard to access when we're trying to report it out and pull it out of somebody. But I really like the way you said that, because I mean,
00:39:33
Speaker
I'm always encountering people who've thought about this stuff more than I have. You know, you articulate it well. I mean, there's two, there's only a couple pieces in some ways of straight magazine reporting that I keep, that I think about often that have really scratched the itch deeply, that is the kind of work I want to be doing every time as a reporter.
00:40:02
Speaker
quote unquote magazine writer. And like they have started to get toward that interiority with my subject. And they're challenging, though, because they require, I mean, they require time. They require a lot of time with someone. And that costs money. That costs money for the magazine. That costs you money as the writer, because it takes a lot of time. It requires a lot of patience.
00:40:32
Speaker
for the subject. And so they're hard pieces to do. And like in our go-go world now, it can be hard to find outlets that are willing to kind of give you that length of rope to either succeed or hang yourself, and to give you that amount of space to unspool that kind of work.
00:40:59
Speaker
But I think you're absolutely right to kind of get that interiority. I mean, I'll just mention two places where I feel that's kind of worked. I did this story a couple years ago for Outside Magazine that I think worked really well. It's a profile of a veterinary pathologist up in Alaska. And a veterinary pathologist, she's a scientist who does autopsies on dead animals.
00:41:29
Speaker
from wood bison to seals to walruses to polar bears, and she's often looking for the diseases that have killed them unnaturally. And what that's telling us now about the changing north, changing far north under climate change, because all sorts of new animals, insects, and disease is marching north as the far north is changing faster than anywhere else.
00:41:58
Speaker
And so I went up and spent a month up in Alaska. I got like a cheap sublet. And I lived up in Anchorage. And she lived outside of Anchorage. And I would see her every couple of days. And I really got a chance to get to know this woman, this scientist. We're still friends. And I watched her cut up like five different animals. And I went out on the tide flats with her one day that she cut up on. And just that amount of time with someone, you get this
00:42:28
Speaker
You get to know their personality. You get to watch them work repeatedly and ask them questions and then follow up questions days later. You get to see their texts. You get to know the names of their family members, but in just a more intimate, slow, slowly unschooling way. And I feel that that, I think,
00:42:51
Speaker
I think that's where I start to bring some value added as a magazine writer. I was not a good deadline writer. I can't do that quick hit stuff. It's very stressful. It's not satisfying. I mean, there's all sorts of reasons I hated it. But that slowly unspooling stuff I think is really fun and interesting. And the story, it turned out great. It won a bunch of awards and stuff.
00:43:20
Speaker
I mean, one other example I'll just give is I've got a story that's about to come out with Wired magazine. And the story has taken 18 months to report and, you know, not every day or anything, but it's, it's got it's, it's this crazy crime caper in which I've got this vigilante guy who's chasing this, this guy.
00:43:42
Speaker
And I got turned, I can't tell you anything about it right now, really, until it pops. But over 18 months, I've really gotten to know my main character. I mean, we were texting for like an hour yesterday, and we just really know each other. And I feel like it just adds that amount of texture. I mean, every week or so, I had another line to the story. And unfortunately, now it's like 8,000 words, and it won't be able to be 8,000 words. But I mean, that amount of time
00:44:11
Speaker
It just changes the story. It just makes it better and better. And, you know, you get to the point where you're just cutting good stuff. And what you have left is just really enjoyable. So I think you're right about getting to know the interiority. I mean, in the case of this latest story, I've literally got all these moments of interiority of him talking to himself and stuff because he told me. So I think what these essays and what these reported stories I'm proud of share
Universality in Personal Essays
00:44:40
Speaker
is that sense of interiority, whether it's my own or someone else's who I've finally spent enough time with that I have a real sense of it that I trust is accurate.
00:44:52
Speaker
Yeah, and with the outside piece, the opening vignette of it, which is, speaking of interiority, is just you contemplating this essentially kind of like a slouching towards middle age and it's just like wanting to be a better runner again and try to awaken something inside you.
00:45:10
Speaker
that really it really spoke to me because i'm in two weeks i turn 42 so i'm a little younger than you not by much but i'm kind of feeling that sort of crunch of time and you know i just feel a bit it could be pandemic related too but i'm just like kind of
00:45:27
Speaker
fleshy you know I'm an athletic person but I feel like it's more dormant and so I'm trying to work through that and so your piece just hit me like at this nexus of I have a similar feeling of just like wanting to reclaim some of that athleticism in and get to a point of just
00:45:46
Speaker
Feeling more just an optimized version of myself just from my own well-being and so yeah you just maybe you can take us to the Headspace that you're talking to that you open this piece about about you know that kind of feeling of oh man Oh shit like I'm in this middle age I'm having this kind of crisis and if I don't act on this impulse to reclaim some of that athleticism shoot I'm just gonna wither on the vine and
00:46:12
Speaker
something I have been thinking about a lot. I mean, just, I guess I had two answers to this question. The first one is just very specifically is like, I've been agonizing over getting older for a while, a while now. And then, and, uh, and so it has been on my mind quite a, quite a bit. And I, I, I wrote for outside an essay that, that got some nice attention about the wheels completely coming off like about four years ago and like being unable to run at all and like, and like being
00:46:42
Speaker
And so the essay was kind of like, Oh, shit, this is middle age. And like, this is middle age as an active person. And I never saw this coming. And a lot of people were like, it's me, you know, you know, and then they really, and they enter people really responded to that. And then it kind of I had no idea that many people would respond to it. And it was a real eye opener that, wow, okay, we all we all go through this to various degrees, you know,
00:47:11
Speaker
And so many of us get hit by this train. And then I was able to, I wrote a story that came out in January in Runner's World about sort of finding a solution as a runner. And I got finally after like $20,000 over several years, a physical therapist was like, oh, you don't have a blood problem or a bone problem. You're just a terrible runner. And he has helped me
00:47:40
Speaker
fix my gait and posture. And so that story in Runner's World was a little bit about being middle age, but it was also, it was mostly like actually just sort of a technique story, but it turned out well. And so I just, this has really been on my mind about like the changes that happen. So I'm trying to work on a longer thing right now about that, which I hope will, which leads to maybe the second thing I want to talk about, which is like, even when you, I've been thinking about this a lot, like even very personal stories,
00:48:10
Speaker
They don't, they're gonna succeed if they're really not a personal story. And what I mean by that, if you'll hang with me on this, is that a personal story works if it's really a universal story. And like, and I see a lot of people write like first person essays and things. And
00:48:40
Speaker
And if I can just be a jerk for a second, I'll be like, that was terrible. And I'll read that and I'll be like, and it was, it was just like, I did this and I did that. And I'm sad because my mom died. And I think, but it's like, doesn't, you know, and I'm not doubting their sincerity. Not at all. Of course. Like I've had a parent die now and you know, we're all going to go through that. But like, what I think people struggle with a lot and, you know, and I struggle this with is every time I try and write a personal piece is like,
00:49:07
Speaker
how do you make your personal, your own personal story is gonna be, it needs to be like a metaphor for everybody's story. Because people read, people read, I mean, it's like a poem, right? A poem about an apple isn't a poem about an apple, it's about the universe or whatever. So your story really needs to be a story that opens up on everybody. And it doesn't mean it needs to talk about everybody else, but somehow everybody needs to see themselves
00:49:37
Speaker
and their life in your story. And I think that's what I see often, people don't pull off in personal stories. It's all about, they're so solipsistic or navel-gazing that they don't pick their head up and realize that that's the real goal of their story. Their personal story is to make other people kind of recognize that it's also about them.
00:50:05
Speaker
Anyway, I think about this a lot because I've been reading other people's essays and I'm like, why isn't this working? One of the ways you can do that, and I guess you didn't ask for my advice, but here you go. No, please. Is that a full of middle-aged white guy opinion?
00:50:41
Speaker
Because it's a personal essay, it needs to have a lot of I and me and like, and then I did this and then I did that. Or even in travel stories, personal travel stories, I did this and I did that. One way to make them less that is just like take out all the stuff about I and me. Like some of the best, that's one of the things I really have learned from good travel writers and from McPhee and from Ian Frazier, who a lot of their work essentially is kinds of travel writing.
00:50:53
Speaker
We need more of them. Yeah, the world needs more middle-aged white guy thought. But I have noticed this.
00:51:11
Speaker
It's like, it's never, they're never the subject of the sentence. Like, but I read a recent bad, kind of a bad piece of somebody's personal essay. And there were 35, 35 mentions of I and me in like a page and a half. And like, I don't, I don't know if I've become too much, too much attuned to it now. But like, I don't, I won't read that.
00:51:40
Speaker
because it can't get out of its own way. The subject can't realize that it's not really about them. I'm not sure if this is making sense, but you don't need to say in a travel story, I went into the barn. You say the barn was decrepit with peeling red paint. Yeah, where the eye is implicit. Yeah, and then maybe seven sentences in
00:52:09
Speaker
The old man milking the ornery cow in the back corner said hello. You know what I mean? By then, you're in the barn. You said hello to me. Now you're in there, but you already knew you were in there. That's one thing I just noticed about people trying to do that stuff. Take yourself out of it and just a little bit goes a long way. Anyway, that's something that's been on my mind a lot.
00:52:38
Speaker
Well, it's a great articulation of what I think makes for great memoir and good personal essay. You said the narrator, in a sense, is implicit. You don't need to hit everyone over the head. We know you're there. You can even just say that person, like the milking the ornery cow, you can even just kind of say, oh, he said hello to me. And in a sense, it's like, OK, now we're fully on the shoulder of the narrator who's doing this skillfully.
00:53:05
Speaker
And I had this experience with, so I've been trying to, for a long time, been trying to sell this memoir about my father in baseball. And when I was talking to my dad about it, because he's similarly to your parents, like of a generation who doesn't like to talk much, and interviewing him to try to get various insights into our lives,
00:53:30
Speaker
He was just very closed off. And I was just like, listen, dad, like some of this stuff might feel kind of raw and naked. And I get that. I totally understand that. But if I do my job well, what's going to happen is you and I are going to dissolve. And then the reader is going to overlay their experience over us and they're going to picture, you know, their father or their daughter and so forth. And then we're just kind of like this vessel for them to experience their story, though they're kind of just
00:54:01
Speaker
digesting ours but it's not like they're gonna judge us or even remember us they're going to like I said overlay their experience and then we yeah we just kind of fade into the background and that's I think what you're getting at is like when you do a personal story well the reader sort of it just the narrator dissolves away and the reader then just kind of has the experience they're gonna have like oh wow that was nice it made me feel these things yeah no I think I think you've hit it on the head I you know I think
00:54:29
Speaker
This may sound overly cynical, but I think ultimately people want to read about themselves. Right. I mean, we understand things about ourselves through other people's stories. And yeah, so maybe that's not that cynical at all. You know, I think that's the way we understand ourselves in the world. And so help people do that.
00:54:50
Speaker
Yeah, and just a couple other things, Chris. I want to be mindful of your time. In writing about the outdoors and travel writing, and you've been kind of talking about it somewhat, they can, in less skillful hands, they can be very rote. Like, I went here, I went here, I saw this great mountain. And in the effort to
00:55:16
Speaker
Elevate that kind of story and to stand out and still deliver the goods and bring outside readers Where they want to go whether they're living vicariously through you or they're actually going to be able to hopefully experience these wonderful things You know in your experience how have you been able to elevate the travel story?
Engaging Travel Writing Tips
00:55:33
Speaker
So it isn't so it isn't just you know banal you're able to give it that extra panache and
00:55:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that can be a little tricky at times. I think, first of all, often you go on these trips and like, I mean, in this case of the current story, the trip was nine days long, but the assignments 3,000 or 3,500 words. Okay, so I know finally from experience, massive chunks of the trip will never make it into the story. And so you need to come to peace with that. So I filled two notebooks,
00:56:10
Speaker
Despite, you know, lots of heavy breathing and exhaustion, I still managed to take a lot of notes. And most of those will go unused. And you just, the sooner one comes to peace with that, the better. You know, so I think, you know, I tend to write a story like that, you know, using chronology just because I think
00:56:37
Speaker
It's easier for people to follow a trip, usually from beginning to end, or you can play with that as a writer. But I just, I will bend. One of the things I learned somewhat early on is to bend time. And so, you know, make it work for you. You know you're not going to be able to tell everything. There were entire days I didn't talk about on that nine-day trip.
00:57:04
Speaker
And so you expand certain moments and you make others vanish. And so I would really recommend that for people. So you might have an anecdote that's 500 words on the first or second day because it's really good and interesting and says something along with the theme. And then you get us to the first hut that night or something and then
00:57:32
Speaker
And then you might have something on the third day. And then you might even skip two days after that. I think it's, I guess what I'm trying to say, you can do that. As a writer, you have the freedom to do that and you should feel comfortable with doing that. And you have the ability to play with words to skip over time and to stretch it.
00:57:58
Speaker
and collapse it like that. It took, as I said, it took me a little while to understand that that was possible. But once you realize you can do that, it's very liberating. So I do that. I'm picturing an accordion. Yeah. Like the right, like some parts of that billow are very expanded and others are crunched up. Yeah. I mean, but once you once you realize you can do it, it allows for all sorts of opportunities. I think another thing I'll say
00:58:26
Speaker
in that is that generally speaking, I think it's particularly important to pay attention in the beginning of a trip because maybe this is a little rote, but you often need to do a lot of setup at the start of a trip and set the scene as things start to unfold and you're introducing people and this and that. So often things that happen toward the front end of a trip
00:58:54
Speaker
Generally speaking, unless someone gets mauled by a bear three quarters of the way in, you know, the events that, it has generally seemed to be the case that things that happened in the first quarter of a trip tend to get in there a little more. I'm not saying that's right, but it seems to happen. So I try to pay particular attention at the beginning of a trip.
00:59:18
Speaker
But yeah, I think that's one thing that's really key is that accordion and that willingness and ability to play with time. But I would just encourage people to always find and look for themes and be willing to change the theme, too. You might think you know what the story's about going in, but be open to the fact that it might end up being something completely different.
00:59:48
Speaker
Yeah, and that can be challenging, too. Like, if you pitched the story on a different theme and they're like, oh, that's cool. Like, I like that idea. And then as you report it out, it's like starting to change itself. You're like, oh, shit. Like, am I veering the ship off course? Is this going to get it killed? Like, that's the ballet you got to play, too. Yeah. You know, one other thing I do really like, too, is like, you know, a great travel writer, among other kinds of writing for
01:00:17
Speaker
for outside is Tim Cahill. And I read a couple of his books as I tried to push through and do a little bit of a different kind of writing, travel writing. Because, you know, I have done a fair amount of pretty straight travel writing for like the New York Times travel section and stuff. And what I really like that people like Cahill do is just take little asides, like almost like philosophical asides.
01:00:47
Speaker
Or they'll have really fun leads that might not even be, they'll bring it, he's so good he can bring it back to the project at hand. But he's got a lead for a story about canoeing the Missouri River. But his lead is all about the mud on the banks of the Missouri. And it's like three, four paragraphs long about just how bad the mud is. And it's just so good. And it's so atmospheric.
01:01:16
Speaker
And you're just like, Holy shit, that's terrible mud. And, um, and then the mud and then the mud ends up, it ends up being sort of a light motif throughout the piece where the mud just keeps, you know, they'll step on shore and they sink to their knees in the mud, you know, but, uh, but, um, so he, I like some of the stuff that he has done. And then I, I just, I tried to learn from him and I did a piece for outside a couple of years ago on riding through the
01:01:42
Speaker
back of beyond outside of Moab and in the Bears Ears before it became the Bears Ears with a group and we rode like seven days through some really remote country on mountain bikes and just like take these asides about you know and have like these kind of kind of goofy ruminations on like the geology and stuff and just be willing to be playful in the midst of your riding and like take breaks from the chronology to
01:02:12
Speaker
to kind of just blow up a moment and say, as I'm riding, I'm looking at these sandstone that, you know, you know, and then then I, you know, for instance, I was like, you know, that stuff came actually from ancient mountains in the Appalachians that washed out here, sedimentized, got pushed up against and now are, now are caking my, you know, my, my shins, you know, and just like, and play, you know, and then it led to a rumination on like,
01:02:37
Speaker
you know, that'll kind of like blow your mind with the idea of infinity and stuff, you know, and so like, you know, as you're riding, you're kind of dehydrated, you're getting all loopy and stuff, you know, but just having fun where you've introduced some knowledge, but you're kind of also not taking yourself too seriously. And you're also breaking up the idea of, I mean, you're breaking up the chronology of the day, you know, during these during one of these, but you're giving a sense of kind of the where your places your mind goes during a long day of mountain like riding. So I like doing that kind of stuff.
01:03:07
Speaker
where you're, yeah, you're again, you're expanding one moment in amongst seven days on a mountain bike ride. And then again, like other days didn't even appear.
01:03:19
Speaker
And this is kind of a Stephen King's pencil kind of question, but when you were talking about when you were running there and you had your notebooks and you're filling up your notebook whenever you can.
Note-taking Preferences
01:03:29
Speaker
I'm a notebook junkie. I love notebooks. I love all kinds and shapes and I have my favorites. But what kind of notebook is your go to reporter notebook? You know, for those for those trips, there's more recent trips that have really been sort of adventure travel. And I flowed to the Middle Fork at the stand last summer for something.
01:03:49
Speaker
Um, I've really gone to, um, just a little flip flip top right in the rain notebooks. Um, with the wax paper and then, you know, they make these space pens, but they're like $12 each. I just bring, I just bring a ton of little, um, golf pencils.
01:04:11
Speaker
Um, and then you, you don't even need a sharpener that I'll bring a sharpener. You just bring up, you have a pocket knife, you're going to have a Leatherman anyway. And so you can sharpen them and like, but I'll bring a couple of those right in the reins and like, probably like four pencils. And that's what I brought on the, on the Switzerland running trip. And like, they're, it's, they're cheap. I know I can't destroy them. I can write on them if they're soaking wet. Um, you know, I do have.
01:04:37
Speaker
Lots of fancy most kind of notebooks, but I just, I won't even bring those on a trip like this. I think I brought one big one that I could sit at the end of the trip and right on the train, take some notes. But otherwise, no, I just had these little, little teeny notebooks that were tiny. They just slipped in the front pocket of my running bath. Yeah. Pretty, pretty low tech.
01:04:58
Speaker
Well, one thing that I always love to end these conversations on, Chris, is asking the guest for a recommendation of some kind. Anything is game for the listeners
Advice for Freelance Writers
01:05:07
Speaker
out there. You know, something that's really exciting you, and then you're like, ah, this is cool, like a brand of coffee or a pair of socks or a White in the Rain notebook. So, yeah, what would you recommend for listeners out there? Hey, Brendan, and we could choose something else, if you'd rather. One thing I have been thinking about
01:05:26
Speaker
is there was kind of a meme or maybe it wasn't quite a meme, but I've heard people say in the last year or two, you know, pitch a story like you're a middle-aged white guy with the confidence of a middle-aged white guy. And like, I think people are kind of saying it sort of disparagingly. But, you know, I've been thinking about that, especially because I've been helping out another freelance writer who's not as experienced. And
01:05:55
Speaker
And, you know, you can say it disparagingly if you want, but like I think there's a lot of lessons to learn from how a middle-aged white guy like me pitches stories as a freelance writer. And there were just a couple things I wanted to recommend to people because I think there's a lot of people out there, you know, kind of doing this work. Like, you know, I was watching some of these folks and they like,
01:06:24
Speaker
I've done this long enough that like I, I, I pitch stuff and I pitch it very, I pitch it to the right editor and I pitch it directly and I follow up within my four or five days. And then I follow up again and I don't take silence for an answer. And, you know, and then I, um, you know, and then I, uh, you know, and then if they, if they say they're interested,
01:06:54
Speaker
then, you know, and then I, you know, I asked how much the money is. And if it's not satisfactory, I asked for more. And if they when they send me the contract, if it's a shit contract, I asked for a better contract. And like, you know, sometimes this stuff doesn't work out. But if it's really bad, I'm I entertain the idea of walking away. And like people are saying, well, you, you're big shot, you can do this. Well, no, I can't. I'm still trying to pay the mortgage to
01:07:20
Speaker
But like, like, you know, this one, this one friend I'm working with, like, she kind of pussy flipped around on this stuff. And like, um, you know, I don't know, you know, I don't know, maybe, maybe it's a generational thing, or maybe, you know, you know, and I don't say this disparagingly at all, but I think some, I think some women have been trained to be more demure about stuff, but no, own it, you know, own it like a middle aged white guy, and like, don't get pushed around by, by people, like, um,
01:07:50
Speaker
This is your job. You gotta, you gotta pay the rent too. And like, you do hard work. And so, you know, you know, be polite, be professional, but like, you know, ask for what you deserve and like, and then like, move on to the next publication. Don't get jerked around for six months while somebody hems and haunts about whether they want a story. So I guess I just been, I've been thinking about that recently. Like, you know, you know, be professional, be polite and, and, and,
01:08:20
Speaker
you know, try and get what you need as a writer so you can keep doing this work because it's not getting any easier.
01:08:29
Speaker
I think that's that's incredible counsel and a great and great a great recommendation to kind of just take on put that hat on and even if you don't internally believe it you know just force it externally and it'll probably like as you start to get a little bit more traction and maybe you're like holy shit that actually worked it'll start building the confidence and that can only feed and bleed into other aspects of your of your life be it your freelancing or just life in general so that's really great counsel
01:08:58
Speaker
Well, I hope it helps people and like I'm not perfect. I'm not, you know, I'm not making $4 a word at publications, but I, I think you're not, you're going to get, I mean, to borrow a phrase from something else, I mean, you're going to, you're not going to get a hundred percent of what you don't ask for or something like that, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, a great horse trainer, a great horse trainer that I've written about a lot and he's a main character in a book I wrote a long time ago.
01:09:27
Speaker
He's very famous for upsetting, upsetting a lot of big horses. He upset Smarty Jones in the 2004 Belmont Stakes with his colt, the Birdstone, and he upset Big Brown's Triple Crown bid in 2008 with this colt, Dutara, and he told me, he's like, Brendan, he's like, the only way to guarantee losing is to not run in the race.
01:09:53
Speaker
And even when he had a 40 to 1 horse, he's like, it might be 40 to 1, but I know the only way I'm going to lose this race is if I don't enter this colt. And sure enough, he entered those colts and he broke two triple crowns as a result. And cash big checks for his owners and himself as a result. And the only way he would have known is by running that race. And I've always, always took that to heart. Yeah, no, exactly. So I just would love to see people
01:10:19
Speaker
just go with more confidence. There's a lot of really talented freelance writers out there who I feel sometimes sell themselves short. Very nice. Chris, thank you so much for carving out the time here to talk a little shop about how you go about the work and this morass that we're in. This was a whole lot of fun. Thank you so much for the time. I can't wait to read what's coming next from you. Thanks for talking with me, Brendan. I appreciate it.
Meditation and Non-Striving Approach
01:10:50
Speaker
Great stuff there. Chris is doing the type of work I really dig. Yeah, the kind of stuff I'd like to do more of. Hope you got some great insights out of that. I know I did. Link up to the show on social at cnfpod. Sign up for the up to 11 CNF and monthly newsletter at brendanaware.com. Hey, too many great things to mention from that newsletter. You're just going to have to sign up. I mean, it's once, it's once a month. It's first of the month. No spam. So far as I can tell, you can't beat it.
01:11:18
Speaker
So last week I was listening to Ted's Bass and my favorite meditation teacher, Kisanga, had a segment about non-striving, which I thought was really really profound. I know for me and long time listeners of this program are well versed and fluent in my frustrations and
01:11:39
Speaker
maybe annoyed by them, I don't know. And the lack of pace in my career and my trajectory in it, yes, you know what I'm talking about. I've eternally felt grounded on the tarmac, and as much as I try to be grateful for, let's say, running water or shelter overhead in an ample refrigerator filled with fresh vegetables and alternative milks, I can't help but feel mired in this in-between.
01:12:08
Speaker
something of a Crash Davis type who had some chops but not enough to make it to the big leagues but knows enough well and he's had 21 days in the big leagues but you know what I mean he didn't he couldn't stay there and live live the dream so to speak but but he knows enough to talk about it can talk a big game but just doesn't have quite enough talent to fully make it and stay there
01:12:34
Speaker
And I'm just going to read a little bit from Kesanga's monologue, which I transcribed by hand in my bullet journal. So here's a couple cool things. Ambition is admirable, but can also be a double-edged sword, especially during these fleeting moments of calm before the week begins.
01:12:53
Speaker
we can get so wrapped up in where we want to go in getting there as fast as possible that we disregard opportunities for meaningful growth along the way and get bogged down by negative chatter whenever we fall short. I encourage you to try a non-striving approach to pursuing any sort of goal.
01:13:14
Speaker
Yes, there is value in setting goals, but there's even more to gain from letting them go in order to focus on the journey. It goes on a bit more, but here's the last part I will read. But at the heart of a non-striving approach is a simple concept, trying less, yet being more.
01:13:36
Speaker
I love that. I loved it so much I wrote it down. I highlighted some things there, and I'm going to refer to that frequently. Almost like a daily meditation, if you will, just to remind myself that things happen at their own pace. Can you hustle and be a non-striver? Is non-striving lazy? In this culture, maybe.
01:13:59
Speaker
for the hustle porn stars most likely. But of late, I'm more inclined to surrender to where I'm at, and that doesn't mean give up. It's just like, oh, maybe you should swim with the current instead of against it.
01:14:15
Speaker
At the risk of using a somewhat tired metaphor of a river, I know, I know, but it makes sense. It really does. There are moments in a river where it's wide and placid and doesn't feel like it's moving very much. There are moments when it's turbulent, whitewater rapids. Sometimes it dries up to a trickle. But you know what else a river does? It never stops moving.
01:14:41
Speaker
So stay wild seeing efforts and if you can do interview. See ya