040 • My content ruined my art
My content ruined my art.
If you, by pure chance, have read Lawrence Yeo's piece Make Classics, Not Content then you might understand what I'm trying to say here.
Creating art, or 'classics', isn't something that's very well dictated to by an external cadence, the same way that content is.
Thus, as one needs to write content to sustain business, the art gets lost. It's simply not produced because of the time investment that's required to write tweets, articles and newsletter issues, not to mention all the other commitments a life normally contains.
But I want to get back to treating writing as art. Some special pieces end up being written because they just come bursting out of you, similar to a piece I wrote called 'Share the emotional burden of others'...
"For the most part, we can keep control of our emotions. Sometimes emotions get stronger though, not only for ourselves, but for others too.
There is a simple method to improve the experience of someone feeling strong emotions, and it's merely to use empathy.
Share in their emotions. Listen to what they have to say and be supportive.
This works with both positive and negative emotions. Think of something bad happening and it's just like the quote - 'a problem shared is a problem halved'. By bearing some of the negative emotional burden of another, you can lighten their emotional load. You're someone they can confide in, share themselves with and generally lean on for support because they feel understood.
On the other end of the spectrum, this works when someone's celebrating success. If you're sincerely proud, it magnifies positive emotion because you're giving the approval everyone craves.
To build this empathy, practice removing yourself from your mind and thinking about others more often. Think about how you can best understand how they're feeling. This makes it easier to divide (in the case of negative) or multiply (in the case of positive) emotions between you.
I suggest you only attempt to share in the emotional burdens of people close to you.
Emotions are potent.
When you share a negative emotional burden you'll feel more negative because you're bearing some emotional weight. When you share in a positive emotional burden you want to make sure that it's on behalf of someone you have a vested interest in seeing succeed. It would disrupt your calibration of success if you were overly invested in the success of people who aren't close to you.
Increase empathy with others to improve their experience by bearing their emotional burdens."
Last year things became a little more difficult for a couple of people close to me and I made the realisation that I share in the short piece that I gave above.
It felt like creating art. Like creating a classic.
Not in the sense that it's something I believe rivals the work of the Shakespeares or the Dostoevskys of this world, but in the fact that it felt easier to share this idea than it did to hold it in. In the fact that I understood with absolute certainty that the work had the potential to improve someone's existence if they read it, understood it and applied it in their own lives.
And I want to do more of this. You'll notice, if you check out Fundamentalised's new home on Substack, that I was creating a lot of what I call 'Essays' throughout September and October last year.
These are the pieces that I feel are closer to classics than they are to content. But they're not very long - I have to fit in what artisticness I can amongst the flurries of content that I put out more regularly.
So this is me saying I'm going to try to write more of these pieces. It's not a certainty - you saw how inspiration struck me for a couple of months late last year before stopping abruptly again. It might be a month or two again before I get the same inspiration to write, but this is my promise that I'll try. And when I do, it'll go straight on to Substack and into your inbox for your enjoyment.
And if you enjoy the 'content', don't worry - I don't have any plans to slow down with that either!
What I wrote this week…
What Students Get Wrong About Note-Taking - I get asked almost more than anything else about how to take notes as a student. This piece dives into my response, and why I actually dislike getting asked this, despite being a student myself.
What I read this week…
Argentina On Two Steaks A Day - I hope that I’ll one day write something as engaging and witty as this piece from Maciej Cegłowski that I re-read this week.