JOE'S TRY #1: WHAT'S A TRY?

A Subscriber-Only Exclusive Post - AT LONG LAST!

“In order to maintain and grow your online presence, be sure to provide supporters with EXCLUSIVE CONTENT to use as an enticement!” So all the guides say when venturing into doing something like Substack. I get it. I appreciate all of you subscribers and supporters whenever you have joined, and beyond doing the updates, this does give me a chance to try something different with my writing, my opinions, my goofiness and my curiosity over just how many people are interested in all of the above.

So, here I am with my first try at “EXCLUSIVE” content (DUM dum dumm!!) – a weekly column, if you will, that will be sent directly to all my subscribers and posted on Substack but NOT cross-posted to my other social media outlets, Facebook and Threads (for the moment).

And, after some thought in between trying not to mangle a name on the update and daydreaming during the daily walks, the concept and the title of the content came to me: JOE’S TRY.

Why? Well, that’s what this inaugural ‘try’ is all about – so read on …

The word “try” has a little bit of personal history – some a little uncomfortable, but mostly inspirational, and that’s a good combination for a creative. The discomfort comes from a piece of direction from a non-profit organization I did a lot of work for and with, and if you’re a STAR WARS fan you’ve heard it: “There is no ‘try,’ there is only ‘do.’”

I get it. I got it. It’s about putting in the work and producing. For those of you who have ever done non-profit work – work that is not just the volunteer part, but earned part of your keep in nonprofits. It is not easy. If you do it, you know it – or you learn quickly. And often … and at some points in time, all the time … all you can do is to try to get to the next day open and operating.

The idea that one must “do” and not “try” makes a little bit of sense. It also puts enormous pressure on people. At least it did on me. So much so that the pressure got kind of overwhelming, that I couldn’t just “try” to help and get my responsibilities filled – that if all I was doing was “trying,” I was failing. It’s not a pleasant feeling.

So there’s a little bit of baggage with me about “trying,” and with perspective, I have to say that IMHO, whole dictum is kind of baloney. “Trying” quite literally IS doing. It’s inherent. And to not recognize it … well, like I said, there’s baggage.

But, “try” I shall, because there’s a second sense of the word – one directly tied to both this kind of writing and one of my longtime roles as an adjunct freshman writing teacher at (mostly) two colleges in Chicago. You see, when you take your first writing course you write those papers we collectively called “essays.” Most then associate the word “essay” with something very specific – like, 1000 words or five paragraphs or show the teacher that you did the reading by summarizing it in a text.

But, in a world history class taken way back in 1980 at Cleveland State University, I learned that an essay is a very specific, very particular type of writing a very clear goal. There is an actual inventor of the essay – a Frenchman named Michel de Montaigne. Wikipedia calls him a philosopher – I was taught he was part of this new entity in the 16^th century that we now call “the middle class.” He wasn’t an aristocrat, he wasn’t monied gentry, he was somewhere in between – he was literally in the middle, trying to find how to negotiate these worlds, and aware that others around him were in the same boat. There was no how-to book since only Bibles were generally available – and those weren’t published in the French language because God or something – but wanting to understand his status, he created something that never existed before.

He created the essay – or in that form of the French language at the time, the “essai.”

In creating the essay, a case can be made that Montaigne created the concept of writing in the first person, as he is generally the subject of his writing. Wanting others to read and interact with him, he also wrote in everyday prose instead of heightened poetic language or the same languages you read the Bible in. Most importantly, he wrote about single topics in simple language, going so far as to title the papers with the topic of the papers so there was clarity, tagging each title with the word “Of.” So you had essays – tries – about everything from behavior (“Of Anger” “Of Liars”) to practical matters (“Of Sleep,” “Of The Custom of Wearing Clothes”) to the deepest questions we all mull over once in a while (“Of Ancient Customs,” “Of Conscience”).

There you have it. After 30+ years of teaching these things, I am here to commit to weekly-ish essays where I’ll mull over a single topic, write in a way that’s not journaling but not merely looking for self-referential back-patting, and do it in a way that others (perhaps like you!) mulling some of these ideas yourself may find more to contemplate in a good and challenging way. I changed “Of” to “On” because most of my favorite classic essay writers – people like MFK Fischer and Joyce Carol Oates and David Foster Wallace – use the “On” naming feature and it makes sense to me.

And thus you have “Joe’s Try” and my first essay – my first “try!”

What topics will I tackle? Who knows?! Will they be connected to the updates? Most of the time, most likely – but it really will be wherever “I” am at! And what will it look like? That will evolve, but here’s a start. Here’s me not just trying, but do-ing, for the first Try.

It won’t be the last …