The Blind Leading The Blind

“If you just work on stuff you like and you’re passionate about you don’t have to have a master plan with how things will play out.” — Mark Zuckerburg

##

Back in the 80’s I was attending a Christmas party held at the house of Art Cover and Lydia Morano, the wonderful owners of Dangerous Visions bookstore in Van Nuys. I was probably five or six books into my career, and feeling like I was finally getting my feet under me. Drifting through the party with a glass of sparkling cider in my hand, I overheard a conversation between two young guys, the theme being how it was impossible to break into the business now, that a few authors at the top made all the money making it impossible to make a living, that basically all was lost for this generation of writers.

Sliding into the conversation, I tried to be helpful, talking about ways of focusing intent (“Think and Grow Rich”, maintaining positive emotions, modeling the actions of the masters, and so forth.) I was kinda proud of myself for the pep talk.

The guys kinda sniffed at me. “Well,” one said, “that’s easy for you to say, from up in your ivory tower.”

I was gobsmacked. I won’t even go into all the ways what they say was not only wrong, but deluded and borderline insulting. With thirteen words, they had canceled out all the work, fear, struggle, doubt, searching, trying, failure, and bloody-knuckled determination by which I’d scratched out a career. Just…canceled it, so that they could have their world view that…