Today’s advertiser is Coactive. Although Beehiiv rules forbid me from asking or encouraging you to click the ad, if you do so, of your own free will and according to your own moral principles, each click will earn me $2.25.

Please note the cool illustrations today by reader Matt Elzweig, a New York City–based illustrator (@mattelzweig). If you, too, would like to contribute some art, or even a piece of writing, just hit me up!

Last week, I lost my voice. Not entirely — this wasn’t laryngitis. Instead, I just had a bad version of the cold/flu/bronchitis/whatever that’s been going around. My throat was raw and sore, my head hurt, I couldn’t sleep, and I felt permanently dehydrated. Technically, I could speak, but I was never sure how my voice would come out: gravelly and deep, cracked and froggy, pinched and muted? And so I spoke as little as possible.

But because illness is never just illness, I chose to see this as a metaphor, psychically entangled with some other recent events in my life. That is, in mid-December, I got called out on some of my own bullshit. Apparently¹, while making the rounds of various media-industry events in November and December, I had, in the midst of cocktail-fueled explanations of my inexplicable job, complained about one particular technology my company used to use. And those complaints — to different people at different parties — had made their way back to the vendor of that technology, who was none too pleased. I got an email from them. We had a very civil conversation. I felt like an idiot.

To be clear (and yet also still a bit vague!), I’m not 100% sure what I said at those parties. I do know that I enjoy talking about the particulars of my business, both the things that work and the things that don’t, and I can see how the energy and specificity I put into discussing this one vendor might be interpreted, by those who don’t know me well, as vicious glee. But what I really don’t want is to appear unprofessional, since I do care deeply about doing things properly in all of my work. And that’s exactly how I was coming off. Not good!

And so, because it’s January 1 but also just because, I figured I would for the very first time publicly proclaim a resolution: I will shut up!

Not entirely, of course. That’s just not possible, either IRL or here on “the page.” I do want to be more careful, to say less when possible, to be right only when necessary, to eschew glibness and inflict no pain. But seriously, how the fuck does anyone know how to do that?

More after the ad…

I’m a writer. And I’ve been a writer for a very long time now. This is the thing I know best — I conjure sentences and paragraphs out of nothing to tell stories, explain reality, explore ideas, and make dumb jokes referencing 1980s pop songs. All I have is words. Strip everything from me — my home, my job, my family — and still I would have words. Take my life itself away, and what’s left behind: the words I’ve written.

And like all writers, when I sit down to put those words in order, I believe that I am, at least in that very moment, right. That I have something to say that is worth saying. That I have a perspective that needs to be shared, that is original, that will provoke my readers in ways that will surprise and please them. Sure, I can be argued with. Sure, there will be editing and revisions along the way. Sure, there will be moments throughout the writing process when I’ll have to pause and think and re-think my approach. Just because I’m right doesn’t mean I’m perfect. But still: I’m right, and because I’m right I write. God, kill me now.

(If I thought I wasn’t, I’d write something else. In fact, if I thought I was wrong about something, I’d write about how I was actually wrong — because at least I could be right about that.)

The ironic thing is that once you’ve written a lot, you will find that you were indeed wrong about a great many things! It happens, it’s unavoidable — especially when you’re doing journalism, with its stringent deadlines, or producing a solo newsletter with no oversight or editorial process. You will make mistakes, and by you I mean me.

My approach to error has generally been to acknowledge it, correct it, and move on. I do this in real life as much as in writing. You might hear me at a party, for instance, ranting going on and on about something — speculating, deducting, asserting, bullshitting — only to be corrected, in the moment, by someone who actually knows the etymology of crayfish or that the movie Smoke was shot in Park Slope, not at The Brooklyn Inn. Oh, okay. Okay! I can take the hit without it wounding my ego: I am always trying to do my best, trying to be correct, acting in good faith as I work things out, and if I’m wrong, well, so be it. I’m not too big — or too much of an annoying old white man, though I surely am that as well — to insist on my infallibility. I may have been wrong, but let’s keep on figuring this out, okay?

But am I too comfortable with being wrong? Does accepting my imperfections mean I’m more willing to continue to be a misguided loudmouth? Should I take my errors even more seriously, and pause myself in some significant way while I figure out how to do better? Should I shoot higher than a B+/A-?

Honestly, I don’t know that I know how to do better. Because while on the outside I may appear to move on from mistakes, on the inside I stew. Nope, wrong metaphor: I let the errors ferment, each in its own transparent container, visibly gaining pungency with the passing years. I remember almost all of them, from missteps in high school to that time at JFK airport when I used the wrong tone in Chinese and said 韓語 instead of 漢語. Each hurt, each humiliation, each lost friendship is stuck vibrating in my brain, reminding me of my tendency to rush on arrogantly and fuck everything up. And still that’s not enough, because I keep doing it!

And my fear — my fear which is also an expectation — is that no amount of slowing it down will change things. Early on in this newsletter experiment, one reader commented that I was just writing too much, and that they’d prefer quality over quantity. But I knew — I knew! — that less would not be more. To wait and ponder and write and revise over weeks instead of hours would not result in better, more thoughtful work, perhaps not even different work. As much as I think things through before I write or say them, the thinking mostly happens in and through the writing — in the spontaneous assembly of ideas into words. This work, this self, is not a Bach variation, with its meticulous, incontrovertible logic; it’s bebop, a wall of sound and fury, an improvisation where maybe because I often get the notes right, the ones I get wrong are particularly discordant.

So the only thing left to do is to pause a little. (Thelonius Monk was good at that.) It doesn’t hurt to wait and to breathe and to think for an extra beat about what I want or need to say or write before I say or write anything. That’s what I will try to do this year. Whether I succeed or fail, I want you to believe I’ve succeeded, and that there’s an extra ounce or hour of forethought behind every obscure cultural reference and murderous argument I produce for you. And if you do happen to spot what you think is an error of mine and wish to bring it to my attention, well, you needn’t: It’s clearly there on purpose, a subtle test to prove to us all that even when I’m wrong, I’m right. 🪨🪨🪨