Spencer Tweedy

My old Tumblr blog.

The Fear of Missing Out

I am uncomfortable very often. It’s something that I’ve talked about a lot before. It’s that notorious “creative itch,” that infamous, insatiate hunger that drives people to make beautiful things and some things that are only beautiful to them and sometimes gamble their chance of a conventionally successful lifestyle to pursue the passion that was birthed out of that itch. Believe it or not, I think about it more than I blog about it.

I’ve been thinking about it even more than ever these past weeks because of Steve Job’s death. My mom told me about it as my band finished up practice Wednesday and I surprised myself (and my nonjudgemental, but nonetheless entertained bandmates) by crying. His illness and imminent fate had been on the minds of so many of us for awhile, and I had thought about how I might feel when the inevitable takes him away from us. I never thought I would cry.

But I did and all the photos and quotes and chuckle-worthy-but-borderline-rude one-liners poured into the digital receptacles (that were created in-part by Lil’ Stevie) of millions of people. Pee Wee Herman paid his respects. So did mobs of grief-stricken fans at Apple stores around the world. The instantaneous mourning of his death and the subsequent celebrations of his life, on blogs, Apple.com, tweets, could not be more appropriate for the man which they honor.

One passage poked out at me through the newly-viral body of Jobsian scriptures surfacing in a somewhat redundant fray. It’s his 2005 Stanford commencement speech.

The gist of it is of passion, the itch’s more sanely-described, albeit identical twin; “the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

And then, this nugget. On death:

You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

His speech is so reassuringly fatalistic, so raw, and that line has close to epiphanic meaning. But I am still so afraid of not being able to “follow my heart,” to do what I love. I’ve had so many opportunities already at the ripe young age of fifteen to begin doing what I love and I still feel afraid I won’t be able to do it in the future. Sometimes I feel guilty to have those opportunities at the ripe young age of fifteen. I want to do great work so hard and I feel lucky to have found something that I love but it’s not easy to do great work for the thing that I love right now, or ever. I am absolutely terrified of the possibility that what I love to do might not be what I love to do in the future, even if that means doing great work for something else that I would then love to do. Even if what I love to do now is what I love to do in the future, what if that gamble—the gamble on the itch—is a bust?

Don’t you know you’re naked, Spooncer?

There’s a book by Studs Terkel called Working. I’ve never read it, but judging by Mandy Brown’s reading notes at A Working Library, I think it falls in line with this whole mess of livelihood and FOMO. From her marginalia:

I’m always struck by those who claim “creatives” are a different kind of people; as if some of us need creative jobs, while others do not. A bigger pile of bullshit I’m not sure I’ve seen. Being creative is a basic human need.

For me, reading this note was like looking down and realizing for the first time that I have been riding a moderately high horse. What makes us artistically crafty folk so special? Can’t you love to balance checks or save lives or be a janitor? Can’t you do what you believe is great work doing those things? This “creative itch” business is definitely real, but it’s not some sort of exclusive ailment catchable only by those of the making-things or fine arts flavor. If ninth grade health class taught me anything, it’s that every human needs to do great work. If Steve Jobs’ speech affirms anything from Working, it’s that every human needs to do great work. It’s just the “human itch”; some, less stoic, just feel it more outwardly than others. In other words, some, less stoic, just blog about it more than others.

Where does nakedness fit in there? (Funny, that’s the same question I imagine Rob Delaney asks himself daily/obsessive-compulsively.) Let us look to Brown’s blurb for Working:

Each of us wants to work and work hard, but so much of modern American life thwarts that simple need.

Ah. Thwarting. It’s more than a fun word to say. So much more.

But my particular fear of being thwarted has a particular, somehow more fortunate twist to it, as I’m sure that of many others’ does. I think I’m afraid of thwarting myself. Forget modern American life. I have me to fear. What if I lose faith? In Jobs’ terms, what if I “settle”? The fact that settling is even a conceivable course of action is reason enough in my mind to fear that it will happen. For the sake of mentioning nakedness one more time, and being consistently analogous, the fear of auto-thwarting makes me blind to my birthday suit.

It’s a cliché admission that life can shaft you like no other. As Steve said, so eloquently, in his speech, “sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.” But if you thwart yourself and settle, you’ll get hit in the head with a brick, and you won’t even have the love of your work to nurse your concussed, passionless self back to health. Or maybe you won’t even get the chance to get hit in the head by a brick. And that would be a life unlived. That would be missing out.

Thank you to Liam Finn for the record that helped inspire this post.