the outlier

half-prepped, divine discontent and warm heart

hello,

This week my mind is full of The Wire. I stumbled across an early episode of season 3 one night winding down after a TikTok live and ended up sucked in. I’ve watched almost that whole season in the past week or so. I love to take on more challenging stuff at the end of the year and the beginning of the next and I feel like I’m using The Wire as warmup for what I think will be The Brothers Karamazov.

Tonight I’m in transit for my first stint of Christmas entertainment and if you make it to the end of this letter, I’ve got a potentially life-altering tip for those of you hitting the road this year. Not only will it warm your body and soul but you’ll endear yourself to your hosts unto the bargain. What could be more festive than spreading such bounteous cheer this time of year??

I will have some Christmas cheer but there will be a few pieces coming along during this time as well. Get a paid subscription for all the good stuff!

a sunny walk and some guy with Teacher of the Year Oli McVeigh

the books📖

This week has been some content creating, some contractual shenanigans, some rough writing which hasn’t yet seen the light of day and then a trip to Dorset to do some boys’ literacy work.

This time was perhaps a closer, slightly more directed experience than in the past, making it good practice for rolling the scheme out to other schools. I had a new class of younger boys I’d not met before, 13-14 year olds who it turned out were all ‘the naughty boys’. One of them strolled in late, plonked himself next to me and asked, ‘SO what are we doing here?’

I replied, ‘What do you think we’re doing here?’ and it turned out he believed our session was some sort of punishment. After comparing their disciplinary issues, we settled in for the session and they were one of the best groups I’ve had yet, rapt at learning about the hero’s journey and sharing their own inspirations. I left one of them a signed copy of Fringes and their teachers were agog that they’d been so brilliant. It was some of the most fun I’ve had with this work and next year will see me pursue more of it.

for your interest

half-prepped, divine discontent and warm heart

half-prepped

Sometimes I wonder whether I should take my endeavours more seriously.

Last year when I gave a keynote speech, I was revising it up to the minute I was due to speak.

Last week, I did my slides for my concluding talk at the UK Sport careers day on the train to Manchester. (Also, who knew Avanti trains were so plush? Perhaps I’ve been fooled by years of Great Western Rail into thinking the train can’t be physically pleasant.)

Yesterday I needed some slides for my boys’ literacy day and this time, I didn’t even bother to finish them.

You could call my refusal to actually try and give my work some polish a form of cowardice – a refusal to try is a refusal to ever lose – but in some respects, you could call the refusal to account for every word or every minute of the future brave. I want to see what the room brings, what I can weave in from the conversations we’re having right there, what I can recall from my hinterlands to add the depth I couldn’t consciously call upon beforehand.

The schoolboys, and one of the GB athletes, asked me about how you write a book and having done this a few times, I know I benefit enormously from opening a document and writing down all my ideas in a big, long, bulleted list. Then I flesh them out haphazardly at my pleasure and with all the gusto I can muster before corralling them into a structure. Rosie Spinks has written a few of the more impressive essays I’ve read this year and I saw a bit of myself in her latestwhere she says,

The longer I’ve been a writer, the more I trust myself to stay unwieldy in the early stages. These days, I know that if I’m sitting down to write, something is probably there, and I just have to keep my butt in the chair long enough to figure out what it is. Easier said than done, I’ll admit.

Sometimes you don’t even know what you’re writing until you’re halfway through. I know this to be true. Not finishing my thoughts means that in the room, in front of an audience, I don’t know exactly what I’ll say until it’s happened. It reminds me a little of playing sport where despite all the seriousness, it behoves to leave a little room for improvisation.

Get half-prepped.

divine discontent

As I mentioned previously, I’ve missed the kinds of people I met at the post-sport career day I hosted and spoke at last week and when I made a list of why, Emma told me to write a post about it. I haven’t finished that yet but there is one curious characteristic that great competitors have to have and it’s actually something they have in common with artists of all stripes.

This great quality is the two-sided blade of self-belief. It runs in tandem with F Scott Fitzgerald’s famous saying that I wheel out too often,

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

Belief needs to manifest in two semi-opposing ways; firstly, that you are capable of great things and secondly, that you can always improve. In sport, this belief in the capacity to get better is often called a growth mindset but this week, I found another version (in Celine Nguyen’s substack) from advertising legend David Ogilvy.

We have a divine discontent with our performance.

Ogilvy calls the constant search for improvement ‘an antidote to smugness’ (so definitely do not say marginal gains), similar to how the best teams and athletes don’t rest on their laurels, and it always fascinates me how sport and art are rarely bracketed together in mindset terms. In a list that almost pointedly omits sport, Nguyen calls divine discontent ‘a feeling that practitioners across many fields—in literature, art, music, performance, film; but also the sciences, engineering, and mathematics—can relate to’. There’s plenty of crossover that is being ignored here, to my mind at least.

Then, as my weary body recovers from another riverbank run, I ponder whether divine discontent in athletic pursuits is for the young and perhaps Nguyen is correct to omit it from her list. Those are all endeavours you can remain productively discontent with. Sport becomes something you must make peace with as you progress. Art is something you can rage against forever.

warm heart

Blackbird Spyplane called it but I approve this message.

Bring your own slippers to the function.

There aren’t many things more infantilising than wearing a semi-smart Christmas dinner appropriate outfit while strolling around in your socks. You’ll also get cold feet.

While I was playing rugby, I’d travel with multiple types of tea to make my hotel stays that little bit better. When I was packing my bags for my first ever digital nomad stint in Ericeira, Portugal, I radioed ahead to the hosts and asked what to bring. My future friend Moa told me with no hesitation, ‘Slippers’. Now whenever I go somewhere for a stint, I make sure to tuck some into my bag to make my stays far cosier.

While I have multiple pairs, I’m always on the lookout for more. I’ve got some hard soles for patio use, I’ve got an Ugg varietal for maximum furriness and this year, I’m after a set of these fleecey beasts so I can pretend I’m walking on clouds.

As a borderline psychopathic but strangely paternal former rugby coach of mine once counselled me,

Warm feet, warm heart.

Slipper up this Christmas.

a book

I’ve finished nothing this week but I can recommend watching The Wire if you haven’t already and if you have, it’s definitely worth a rewatch.

a listen

I listened to two wonderful author talks this week with writers who seem to have hit upon an enviable split of career activities. I’m always looking for people to learn from and these two are doing the kinds of things I’d like to do myself.

Brianna Wiest is really insightful about her process and her balance between disclosure and privacy in her conversationwith Rick Rubin about her career while David Whyte’s chat with Tim Ferriss is not only interesting, it’s wonderful to listen to him recite various pieces of his own poetry throughout.

a quote

Hey, hey, hey. A life. A life, Jimmy, you know what that is? It’s the shit that happens while you’re waiting for moments that never come.

– Lester Freamon

lastly

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I’ll see you next time.

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