8 Clicks from Nowhere ䷀

Dispatches ⌂

Category: [17] Late & Ready

What late-bloomer artists might teach us about persistence.

Chapter List

  • Book Guts

    One of the local cafes where I hang out for my morning writing sesh is solid at promoting artists from the neighbourhood. 

    I was ordering my tea and standing beside the cash register were a couple stacks of self-published books for sale, local poets mostly from what I could tell, who had hung out their work with a little sign and a price tag and basically said, hey, “I wrote this… and I live in your community.”

    Maybe that’s my next step, but I will say that it inspired me to do something similar: set up a book stand on my website and offer these words for sale.

    I know I’m going to come across like a bit of self-promotion here, but I think it’s more than that: I’ve been writing away in obscurity for literal decades while simultaneously fearing the big dangling blade of traditional publishing.

    The internet, for all as much as it has sunk into a kind of slop warehouse of inane content, is still filled with more great indie content than I will ever be able to consume in my life. It’s much harder to find in 2026, but it’s there. I’m certain of it.

    My effort at the cafe book drop then comes in the form of code: I whipped up some custom software to convert all these hundreds of posts into something that very much resembles an ebook—and then I dropped it into a page where people might see it there and buy a copy as they are passing through, as much as me saying, hey I wrote this… and I live in your internet community.

    I know it takes guts to put words into something quasi-permanent and then ask someone to pay you for them. I know, because I have spent a long time not having such guts.

    But maybe as I get older and give a few less fucks about the people distracted by fashion reels and shiny influencer slop, those guts are a bit easier to come by.

  • Patient Portals 

    As I write this I’m preparing for a little end of summer vacation. We’re jetting off for a week for a family adventure. And I’m bringing my sketchbook, of course.

    I came back from Japan last year with a dozen urban sketches in a notebook, and it has become one of my favourite souvenirs. And yet, invariably, when I show anyone their first question is always: how long do these take you?

    Sketching isn’t a camera, obviously.

    It’s not fast, and so saying that I can draw pretty fast is a relative expression of time investment. I can draw pretty fast, but that means I usually spend less than thirty minutes with my pen sketching out the details of a scene.

    Again, it’s not a click and go. It’s find a place to sit, out of the way of the bustle, and then work through the scene, chewing out the shapes and shadows, poking in the details, and trying to get as much as I can before either I attract an audience or annoy my ever-patient wife.

    Urban sketching is the opposite of urgency.

    I may have enjoyed it in my youth, and maybe even been pretty good at such forms, but I think my patience would have been less available to the pages.  Sitting somewhere with no pressure to keep exploring the bigger place but instead soaking in the details of just one spot, one scene, one moment… that’s the persistence of maturity, I think.

  • Late Ready

    Everyone starts somewhere, but some of us start later than others.

    There are a few hard realities of learning a new craft after a certain age. Heck, like almost anything there is a ticking clock for greatness. Me picking away at the piano at nearly fifty is almost certainly not going to open up a spot at The Juilliard School any more than my dabbling in urban sketching this late in life it going to give me the time and energy to pursue a scholarship at Emily Carr University.

    The reality is that after certain doors in life, close most of the world will almost certainly regard your pursuits of artistic and creative skill as little more than a retirement hobby.

    And maybe that’s fair.

    …but it also isn’t.

    Art, fiction, music, all of it is as much about translating life experience into something outside of our memories. Fine whiskeys are aged to make them better, so why not artists, too?

    I am on the fringes of an age category transition myself, looking at much of middle age as something I’ve been through and starting to think about not just age, but the general idea of starting on a creative path as a late entrant.

    I got into watercolour when I was older than my first instructor.

    I took up the violin at forty.

    I didn’t start seriously trying to play the piano until just a year ago.  

    And something tells me that my flailing sense of urgency about aging might be a wee bit overblown. 

    Under the category of Late & Ready I’ll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Memory Waned

    If I ever need a better reminder that age plays nasty tricks on us all (oh, and that I should keep a notebook or my notes app with me at all times) is sitting here for five minutes trying to trigger the second half of a lost memory.

    I remember that last night I had a great idea for an article, but this morning sitting here to write said article I can’t remember a thing about it.

    Is that getting older, or just bad idea management overall?

    I think we all probably encounter empty places where we thought we left our creative car keys the night before, and maybe such as it was in my youth I’m just more frustrated by this thinking organ in my skull that I feel like I should have more control over as I approach fifty.

    Online analysts will tell you that technology has allowed us to offload our memories to external devices and this has made the tools in our brains dull and fragile. On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with leaning into a notebook to keep track of fleeting ideas when you don’t have time or inclination to open the laptop and immediately start working on them.

  • Afternoon Nap

    Maybe it’s getting older (or maybe it’s because I gave up caffeine six months ago) but I find my batteries drain shortly after lunch and a thirty minute nap is in order.

    I admit it. I’m going to be fifty this year. Yikes.

    (Not that you couldn’t tell from guy still writing a like this in twenty-twenty six, but  I ain’t a teenager anymore.)

    I spend a good chunk of my mornings working on creative brain work, getting the important stuff off my plate, and being all professional. 

    Then I eat a (usually) healthy lunch.

    And by one-thirty. Ugh. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open.  If life allows, I’ll close the lid of the computer and close my eyes, too. 

    I suppose it’s a universal truth of a sort, but if you can swing a nap to recharge your batteries in the middle of the day then do it. Don’t be ashamed. Don’t begrudge the sleepyheads. Don’t frown at someone who can use an extra half hour of rest. 

    Sleep is not wasted time. It is how our brains rejuvenate. 

    I always knew I’d get older some day. Heck, as they say, aging is a privilege and a monument to surviving this crazy universe.  And if I can experience it a little more clearly after a few extra winks then all the better, right?