I don’t like to call anyone out in my work, so trust me that this is not a story about a particular person, but a composite individual.

She is a gifted artist who created beautiful illustrations. This artist doesn’t want to sell her originals, only her prints. And she only wants to create work that features characters she’s created. She doesn’t want to do commissions and she doesn’t want to sell her work at festivals and farmer’s markets. She doesn’t want to be on social media, and she doesn’t want to do any networking in real life.

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I have an ongoing text conversation with my cousin in which we seek to solve the problems of the universe…or at the very least, our own.

Recently, we observed how out of balance we can get if we follow advice meant for someone with a dramatically different temperament. “I don’t think everything is healed by action,” I said. “Rest is important. But probably if you’re a person who is constantly resting, you need more action.”

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I still remember something my friend Weston shared over a meal years ago.

I had asked Weston, a gifted musician and the singer/songwriter behind Ayo River, how he avoided getting creatively frustrated. His songs always seemed to flow from a deep place within him, free of self-consciousness and artifice. Prolific and generous with his work, he made it look easy. How did he do it?

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I keep thinking I’m going to run out of stuff to talk to you about. But the cool thing is that I keep learning and growing. I’m not just having new ideas about stuff to write — I’m having new ideas in general, triggered by the events and circumstances of my life.

And one fresh idea is something I’m calling the threshold effect. This concept has been coming up lately as I talk to parents about how to help their kids pursue passionate interests, making the most of the abundant free time that so many of them have during this phase of the pandemic.

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I came across a plaintive blog post by a struggling entrepreneur. “God,” she said to the Internet, “Why won’t you send your blessings to my business?”

Yesterday, I wrote about how we can succeed with something if we stick with it and refuse to entertain the possibility that we don’t have what it takes. But that’s about our own skill and persistence. We run into trouble when we think we can control what other people do if we just try hard enough or show up long enough…and if that is the case, controlling the actions of an almighty deity would seem to be to be off the menu as well.

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