Curious and Messy

This is what I hope this newsletter to be

First, welcome and thanks. 

As for this thing? Well, I’ve had some thoughts. But they kept changing. I kept waiting for the perfect idea. What will this be about? What will my first post be about? I’d kind of forgotten that I had this. I would get an occasional subscriber and I’d be like, how’d that happen? 

John, Phillip Annand’s father, of all people, signed up for a paid subscription. I told my lady. She was like, well now you have to start it. 

So here we go. 

Thanks John. 

I just want to write. I will try to make sense of things while making a mess along the way. I imagine at times my thoughts through words will be interesting, inspiring, depressing, infuriating, curious, and confusing. And hopefully, we can be OK in that together at a time when it feels like we are all trying to say the perfect things all the time. Cover all the bases. Hit all the right marks. 

Perfect is boring. 

Messy is interesting. 

I want to write without having to think about those things. At least not be afraid to miss the marks but not be all like intentionally trying to miss them either like if I hit them I hit them and if I miss them I miss them. As long as it was truthful, for that moment, cause our thoughts change all the time. 

I know being intentional is in right now and perhaps I’m being a bratty child by rejecting that notion just because it’s in but in my 40s I’ve learned to appreciate what comes and flows especially when I don’t get what I intentionally set out for. 

I’ve struggled with control for most of my life. It’s often played a destructive role in my relationships with lovers, friends, family, and co-workers. My screenwriting teacher back in the day told me that my writing was too neat. All the elements in my pieces fit perfectly. Everything made sense. Everything worked the way it should have. And well, it would bore the viewers. He encouraged me to get messy. Push it. To not be scared to surprise myself. 

I’m not going to pretend to speak on behalf of a people or anything. I’m going to try to wrestle with my hypocrisies. Sometimes I will win, sometimes I will lose, sometimes I will draw. I’m going to try to work through my thoughts and get muddy in the gray. Hopefully, I’ll show you how much I don’t know as much as how much I do know. I’ll have more questions than I will have answers. And I hope you’ll still be here.  

Gonna leave you with a quote that inspired all this. It’s from a Paul Beatty interview, one of my favorite authors.

“Just trying to create space for myself and hopefully that can create space for others.”

Also, is Curiously Messy better than Curious and Messy? 

See you next week. 

*Photo by Ellington Hammond