The MasterClass Effect

"Be authentic," they say.

Hey, how are you doing? If you’re like me, you’re probably tired. Physically tired, yes. But also tired of the circus that is the election. I’m glad it’s almost over. Please let it actually be over soon and not drag on in the courts for months, we all need some time to relax over the holidays. I’d be lying if I didn’t mention that I’m glad the results are looking like they will break the way I hoped they would, for the most part. I think our country has a lot of work to do to clean up the divisiveness and division that has emerged and emboldened in the past four years. We all have to live alongside each other, so let’s figure this out together. You-know-who certainly shook things up. But he shook them up in a much different way than a lot of people thought he would—even his initial supporters. It was like the country was a crowded theater—if you can picture that from the time way back before Covid—and he ran in and yelled “fire!” and people either freaked the hell out or helped start an actual fire. Anyway, hang in there.

I wrote the short piece below in a fit of frustration a few days ago. The only editing I’ve done on it is deleting one word. I hope you enjoy it.

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Photo by USGS

I don’t want to write tonight.

There. I said it.

What I really want to do is scream. But everyone else in my house is asleep, so that would be reckless. I want to be reckless again. I miss reckless.

Yes, the guy who has consumed maybe one alcoholic drink in the past year (and probably didn’t finish it), has never smoked a cigarette in his life, and hasn’t smoked weed since the nineties, wants to be reckless. Go ahead and laugh. It’s okay. It’s funny. In fact, it’s ridiculous actually.

Maybe reckless isn’t the right word. Bold. Yeah, bold. That’s the right word. I want to be bold. I want to be noticed for my boldness. For my willingness to write my truth unvarnished. Raw. Real.

One of the downsides of trying to grow an audience for the blood and tears I’m trying to spill onto this page is that I spend more time on social media. More time sending tweets into the void and posting statuses that get scrolled past. More time wishing I had a cheat code to get just a little further along. More time lamenting the people who are further along than me.

“Be authentic,” they say one minute. Then, “Buy my thing that will make you more like me,” the next. If they were being authentic, they would say, “Look. I had shitty days and shitty nights where I wanted to quit. But I kept going. I tried something. It didn’t work. I tried something else. It still didn’t work. I tried something else yet again. And then it worked. Somehow. So I did that again. And again. And again. But here’s the thing—I still don’t have it all figured out.”

But nobody says that shit because it doesn’t sell.

People ask for real talk, then they get it and say, “Nah, I’m good. I’d rather pretend I have a chance at doing something that’s really fucking difficult with as little effort as possible.”

I’m not disparaging these people. I’ve been one of those people. Multiple times. Thankfully not for life-savings amounts of cash. 

It’s the MasterClass Effect.

MasterClass—one-stop shopping for all your film scoring, photography, cooking, poker playing, and writin—wait, David Sedaris has a MasterClass?!

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