By Mike Johnson
“To write freely is to walk a joyous, terrifying, exhilarating path naked through the world of the fully clothed.“
- Michele Garber
I entered sixth grade, wanting to be a baseball player.
I was good at it too.
How did I make this judgement?
I knew what a diving catch felt like.
I knew what barreling up a crisp liner to center felt like.
I knew what sliding around the catcher while dragging a hand across home plate felt like.
I tasted my teammates’ anticipation that it was me walking up to bat.
I heard their shouted encouragement.
I saw their cheers as I drove in another run, stretching a single into a double.
Both firsthand experience, and others’ experience, provided feedback.
Both verified my talent.
This is how we go through life.
We do.
We sense.
We review feedback.
We adjust.
Mr Synder was our teacher.
I wondered if he picked sixth grade because we were just old enough, just smart enough, and just moldable enough to imprint his lessons on our future.
I hope so.
Because he’s the reason I became a writer.
He assigned each of us to write a story, stand in front of our classmates and read it out loud.
This was new.
And terrifying.
I rejected a few boring ideas until a risky one popped in.
I’d write about a dream I’d had where Mr. Synder was a monkey.
It was risky because my selection was unconventional.
I was trying to be funny.
While dancing right on the edge of insulting my teacher.
What if it bombed?
I experienced the joy, terror and exhilaration of completing a naked story that would be read to a clothed classroom.
I was quite happy with it.
But I imagined both possible outcomes, exhilaration and humiliation.
During my morning paper route, I second-guessed myself a hundred times.
Am I really going to do this?
But it was too late to write something else.
Laugh or cry, I’d cast the die.
Terror cuts deepest in the young.
They don’t yet have the perspective to realize that the worst-case scenario rarely occurs.
So I trembled severely as I awaited my turn to read.
But destiny was on my side.
The class roared with laughter, my serious teacher chuckled, and I was the star of the assignment.
I’d invented a game out of thin air, stepped to bat in a full stadium and belted a home run.
I was hooked.
Writing felt better than baseball because it was an individual sport.
A sport where you had total control.
Made your own rules.
Wore your own uniform.
Created your own schedule and salary.
Assembled entire worlds out of thin air, using just 26 letters as ingredients.
But I still had to Do.
Sense.
Review feedback.
Adjust.
That's life.
Over the decades, I’ve written millions of words for others and millions for myself.
Both earned income.
But only one earned freedom.
The riskiest one.
The individual one.
I learned that distinction all the way back in the sixth grade.
Ever since, I’ve found uncommon success, by imagining authority as monkeys.
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More:
What I Learned Batting Against a Hall-of-Famer
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