Forget things that scare you -- do something every day that annoys you

You're likely sitting on a vast store of jet fuel for literary, creative, and personal growth. You'll find it deep in your subconscious in that big tank labeled ANNOYANCE.

Few things annoy me more than a heinous, cheugy throw-pillow aphorism. For example:

I copypasted this from some site called picturequotes dot com. Thank you, picturequotes dot com. Thank you for for reminding me how much personal growth lies waiting for me at the other end of…what am I looking at, some kind of OSHA-noncompliant exurban ropes course in the Caucasus region? A woman who chose to wear restrictive bootcut business-casual slacks to walk an actual tightrope between cliffs?

WHO DOES THAT? WHO DOES THAT, PICTURE QUOTES DOT COM?

The visuals aren’t even the most annoying thing about this graphic, though. That award goes to the advice. It’s terrible, which I feel bad saying, because Eleanor Roosevelt is the one who came up with it.¹

But, yeah—it’s not great advice. Not per se.

Outside of a few highly specific contexts, I’d never recommend doing something every day that scares you.

I mean, if you have a specific phobia-based anxiety disorder, by all means do something every day that scares you UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF A QUALIFIED PROFESSIONAL. I hear programmatic exposure therapy really helps.

Ditto if your “phobia” is less of an “eek, tarantulas” thing and more of an “I want to do something large and positive but lack the self-esteem to take the risk.” If you want to try a new hobby or tell someone you love them or, like, run for office but fear people will laugh at you or reject you when you do, by all means do it. Some people very well might laugh at you and/or reject you. You’ll almost certainly survive. And making a practice of knowing you’ll survive might be just what you need to fulfill your desires in the long term.

For every situation like that, though, there are about a million in which doing something every day that scares you = a TERRIBLE idea. That’s because programmatic engagement with the scaries isn’t a good thing in and of itself; it’s ethically neutral, a tool for normalizing the uncomfortable. And some things should be uncomfortable!

Do you know what scary things become less scary when we do them every day, as is amply evidenced by human history? Genocide, fascism, shoplifting, robbery, torture, tax evasion, perpetuating abuse, and tolerating the intolerable.

Doing something scary every day is a good tool for expanding your comfort in a variety of situations, in other words, but it doesn’t necessarily bring you where you want to go.

And oh yeah:

It’s absolutely shit advice if you’re trying to build a successful literary career.

Doing something every day that scares you might make you a little less scared of rejection, which is not nothing in this industry. But it won’t improve your writing craft or commercial appeal to readers. At all.

As I’ve argued many times in this newsletter, great books aren’t acts of accomplishment or Daring Greatly or Having Breadth of Experience or Knowing All The Things. They’re acts of intimacy.

In order to write brilliant books that electrify readers and thither word-of-mouth sales, authors must first be capable of loving, strong, flexible connection with other human beings. Authors don’t so much have to understand other people’s interiority as be able to regard, value, believe in, love, and cherish the whole of who they are—understandable and perplexing qualities alike.

(Yes, I know many “great” authors, especially men and especially in the 20th century, couldn’t really connect to other people, especially women, in this way. I said what I said.)

Even more crucially, great authors need to have that kind of intimacy with themselves. They need to be skilled in self-observation and self-acceptance. They need to be able to hold and love their own contradictions, not just other people’s. They need to be able to do that without imploding.

So many would-be authors think something exciting needs to happen to them or around them in order to create work other people desire. They think no one’s going to care what they have to say unless they—for example—Do Something Every Day That Scares Them and then write a snappy essay for Buzzfeed that’s like, “I Walked a Caucasian Tightrope in Business Slacks, And You Won’t Believe What Happened Next.”

This is an incorrect belief. This is the opposite of what great writing requires. Trying to be interesting in order to create intimacy is literally the opposite of emotional maturity—it’s your inner child screaming “look Mommy look look look at me look at this thing I did” in a very human, very immature bid to have loving regard offered to you.

What you want to be doing instead is offering that regard to other people. And to yourself. That’s how you grab ‘em.

You need to find your inner wellspring of calm and self-acceptance and egolessness. It’s in there, I swear. No one on Earth is capable of swimming in that pool 24/7, don’t worry. But all transcendent writers must at least be able to dip a bucket into it from time to time. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to offer readers a drink.

Do you know how to find that wellspring inside you?

BECAUSE I SURE DO. MUAHAHAHA. ::takes off for your inner wellspring::