#6. Being Okay with Being Okay is Just Fine
I'm writing a book--but don't worry! I'm not going to try to get you to buy it!
The thing is, I had my first book published 22 years ago this month, and I've had fourteen published since. I had a three-book six-figure deal. I spoke at New York Comic-Con. I co-wrote a book with James Patterson. I'm a New York Times bestselling author.
But that book came out six years ago and I had thought that I was over with it. I considered myself retired. I only recently started writing again just for fun, just because I had a neat idea. It was not--and this is the important part--because I wanted another publishing contract. In fact, I've talked about this in therapy: I'm not allowed to write books for fame and accolades anymore. I'm not allowed to write books for money anymore. Sure, I want my stories to be read, so publishing them would be neat, but I am not actively pursuing a career as a writer. If I never sit at another book signing ever again, I can still die happy.
The thing is, I've had the highs and I've had the lows, and I'm content with being... fine.
I have been thinking about this for the better part of a year, but today I was listening to an interview on NPR with Richard Kind, who is probably not your favorite actor but who you probably like. He's been a character actor in hundreds of things. He has been on big shows--like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Only Murders In the Building--but he's not the big star. I personally love him as Bing Bong in Inside Out, but, come on: it's just Bing Bong.
In the interview, he told the story of how he and Matthew Perry walked through a casino the month Friends launched and no one noticed either of them--but when they tried the same thing six months later, Perry was mobbed two steps onto the floor. Fame, Kind says, "It's a prison."
Kind once aspired to that Fame. As a theater kid, his idol was The Music Man's Robert Preston. And yes, he has made it to Broadway--he was even in the original company of a Sondheim musical... just not a musical you've ever heard of.
On the matter of fame, he says this:
"Oh, every day I feel like a fraud! Every single day. I'm waiting for the world to say I'm not that talented. I'm not that good. Every day I wake up like that. Every day! But a flip side of that, a friend of mine said, "I may not always be great anymore, but I think I'm good enough to never stink." You know what I mean? I'm not going to be bad. I'll be fine. There are parts that I hope I'm great in. And I always yearn not just to be great, but to be better than everybody else in a scene. I want to be great. But if you're playing tennis with a better tennis player, it's just not gonna happen. So there were some times when I say, you know what, you're not gonna win an Academy Award for this role, just do it correctly. Don't try and stand out. Don't try and steal [the scene]. Just do the part. And that's a very different way to come to set."
That's the way I feel about writing. I started in a writing group twenty five years ago with Brandon Sanderson--and I'm never going to be a Brandon Sanderson! But I still published some books and every October I get a royalty check from HarperCollins that pays for our Christmas presents.
And I'm fine! I'm enjoying it.
Being okay with being okay is just fine.
Interesting Things in the News This Week
Heard and McDonald Islands
#1. The Heard and McDonald Islands made news this week when the US government levied tariffs on them, despite the fact that they are completely unpopulated by humans and export nothing. The penguins, of which there are many, do not produce any goods. This has been in the news extensively as a punch line.
And it is funny. But what you may not have known is that the Heard and McDonald Islands are home to a UNESCO World Heritage Site! They are the only islands in the Antarctic that have active volcanoes. And, for reasons that I don't understand but which a volcanologist would find neat, they are “'open a window into the earth,'”... because they provide an opportunity to study how crustal plates form ocean basins and continents."
So, they're not all punchline!
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!
#2. You know how AI is terrible because it steals content from other people and uses it to create Large Language Models and that's plagiarism? Well what if--what if--instead of giving AI all the books in the library to scrape, we fed it all of the dolphin sounds that we've ever heard?
What would that mean? Would it mean that we could suddenly communicate with dolphins? Maybe?? Well, not suddenly, but the Wild Dolphin Project, who is doing just that, has said that they have already done as much "translation" as they would have manually been able to do in 150 years.
#3. If I were to tell you that researchers at the University of Waterloo have created two groundbreaking products that can vastly improve mens' health (and the health of everyone who come into contact with men) what products would you think I'm talking about?
What if I told you that these products achieve results that are meet the industry requirements at only 1.5%--meaning, if the industry said "You can have 100 of these things" then these products will only give you 1.5 of them?
Then what if I told you that these products are just really, really awesome urinals that greatly reduce splashback?
Yes, I know it's gross. But wouldn't that be great? (The product names are '‘Cornucopia” and “Nautilus.”)
#4. If you never heard of the musician Alvin Lucier, and you're sad that he died in 2021 before you got a chance to hear him, then prepare to be gobsmacked because they have resurrected his brain and it's making new music???
So, what they did (by "they, I mean three Australian artists and a neuroscientist) was use white blood cells that Lucier had donated before he died, and made stem cells, and now those stem cells are "alive" in an art installation (called "Revivification") where the electric signals that these living cells create spark a mallet to hit a gong. Music!
So, not exactly life after death. But better than nothing. (?)
Diversions and Distractions
If you have been watching The Pitt, HBO's new ER drama that is getting All The Best Reviews, you'll enjoy this watch-through by YouTube's Doctor Mike. The show is being praised by doctors as being the most accurate medical show ever, and in this video you'll see Doctor Mike breakdown how every little background comment and movement is perfectly accurate. (The show is great.)
Remember last week, when one of the things that I highlighted was the de-extinction of Dire Wolves. Well we all had a good laugh about that, but they weren't really de-extincting Dire Wolves, they were just--well, they were doing kind of a cool third thing with wolves. And everyone's favorite science communicator, Hank Green, takes half an hour to explain what the media--and he, and I--got wrong, and what is actually happening instead.
Wheezy Waiter is one of my favorite YouTubers, because his thing is "self improvement tips, but funny", and he tries various challenges like giving up his smartphone for a year, or taking 30,000 steps a day, and just records how it goes. And no, I will never give up my smartphone or walk 30,000 steps, in this video, he and his wife have the goal of waking up at 4:00am every day--WHICH IS ACTUALLY A THING I DO EVERY DAY AND LOVE
