Am I Using My Craft Good

I'm trying to encourage people to read and write. It's that simple. Learning to read and write is extraordinarily difficult. It takes years of practice. But the ability to read anything you want and write anything you want is a fuckin superpower.

It allows you to climb up life a lot easier than if you suck at it. We think we're done learning when we graduate high school or maybe university. That's wrong. At school, they're imprinting pathways onto your mind of how to learn. It doesn't matter what books they use to teach you, Macbeth or Animal Farm, they're showing your brain how to learn.

Then we're all let loose on the world for better or worse, left to deal with shit as best we can. The pressure's on. If you read something online and infer the wrong message it can have disasterous consequences. If you write a post that people take the wrong way, that's most likely the fault of your writing, and again can have disasterous consequences.

We're all given loudspeakers but no one knows how to speak. You think MLK or JFK just stood up and said world-changing speeches without practicing first? None of us were ready for the podium. And now each of us stands individually, alone and afraid on a stage and the whole world is the crowd. Some have your back – some at your throat. The vast majority couldn't give a fuck what you say. But the fact your words can reach so many people is unprecedented in the history of the species.