This drawing started off as a pun. A literal roof over your head – cue the laughter! But it didn’t seem that interesting to me when it came time to ink it. So I added another wrinkle: making it a book that looks like a roof (and vice versa).

I know that books both feed and starve me unlike anything else. When I’m feeling in a rut – and not just in my writing – I often find a worthwhile remedy in a worthwhile book. Sometimes it’s a bit of nonfiction with enough truth to jolt. Often it’s fiction with sentences both luxurious and incisive, the kind of writing that makes the world feel a little bigger and a little wilder and aswim with possibility. At the same time, I have a To Be Read (TBR) pile surrounding my nightstand like a stacked-paper wall , forming a mental barrier of entry far more formidable than any army could dream up.

This year, I’ve been working with a new student who’s love of books is impossible to exaggerate. Their face is rarely seen in the halls; it’s too deep behind another book. As a team, we all discussed it like it was a real problem to be dealt with. They needed to walk faster! They needed to socialize more! They needed to realize there was more to life than books! All of these arguments are valid. But I was often surprised how many overlook the one that made the most sense to me: that this was a child who moved a lot in their short life, who went through COVID lockdowns and missed social time, and who just might find a book to be the most comfortable thing to take shelter under. It is safe. It is reliable. It is undemanding. It always provides, be it adventure or feelings or a kernel of thought to be stuck in their mind’s teeth. No matter where you go, there is always be a book to be discovered. There is always a book to cozy under and make your own little home.

I think a lot about hamster wheels these days. For some who loves to research and research and research some more (did I say ‘research’?), it’s easy to misunderstand action for wheel-spinning. When I look back fifteen years of learning about screenwriting, for example, from the early days of writing shitty short films on Movie Magic to reading through transcripts from the Scriptnotes podcasts to reading another book about screenwriting structure, I realize I’ve spent nearly half of my life preparing for doing the actual thing. That’s a lot of wheel-spinning. A lot of assuming and guessing and constructing knowledge that hasn’t had a chance to fail yet. Because that’s probably the point: you can’t fail when you’re always preparing. You don’t think you can feel too guilty about the lack of work if you’re still working on the skills to even begin the lack of work.

But it’s all a facade.

Yes, it’s good to invest in learning. But so much more learning comes from actually doing the thing. From studying those who have done the thing. From learning from the mistakes of applying what you learned and just how well it did or did not turn out. I’ve written first drafts of four feature-length screenplays in the past four years, but two of them came in a 2-month span at the beginning of the COVID lockdowns, when we had plenty of time at home to finally put some things in action. I learned more writing those last two scripts than I did in any of the transcripts or books I read, or any of the thousands of screenshots I took from various screenwriters and screenwriting wannabes. And there is still so much more to learn! But it’s easier for the car of new learning to merge onto something worthwhile if you actually got your own traffic going. And traffic only exists where movement lives. No one wants to drive into a never-ending loop.

The best way to deeply understand a concept is to apply it to a different domain. Let’s shift from screenwriting to basketball. If I spent fifteen years of reading about how to finally set up some basketball plays or how to finesse my shooting stroke or how to negotiate a professional contract, all of which without actually playing on the court: would you sign me to your team? If I spent years and years in school learning about teaching and universal design and curriculum and lesson planning and all that fun stuff without ever actually stepping foot in the classroom: would you hire me?

That’s the thing about lifelong learning that, to me, separates fun facts from fulfillment. When it’s just things you’re vacuuming up but not applying in any physical, intentional way, you’re inevitably going to run into an emotional wall where you wonder what the point of all of it is. But if you’re applying and failing and trying again? It’s easier to enjoy the work for what it is.

Being stuck is being in an infinity loop where the surface changes – from stairs to streets to slides to ladders and back again to stairs – give you the short-term sense of accomplishment without actually getting you very far. You know more, yes. But knowledge without some kind of application is an unbalanced, wobbly head bumping through the hallways of life.

The thing about sour grapes is that you have to be vulnerable to create them. You have to really reach for them. I imagine it like you’re reaching for something you really want and it’s up really high, so high you’re on your tippy toes, your stomach stretching to where your shirt can no longer cover it, leaving your belly, the belly you’re so often self-conscious of, exposed for a good old poking. Inevitably, someone pokes that soft spot. You recoil immediately. They make a comment about your weight or your size or even give you a smile. But it doesn’t matter what they do or say; they’ve made what was once invisible very, very present. And it’s not a fun feeling. At all. You slink away and, either consciously or unconsciously, decide you’re not going to reach for that thing again anytime soon. You made all that effort and you walked away with nothing but perhaps embarrassment. It wasn’t that important after all, you convince yourself.

That’s what sour grapes is: really wanting something and then diminishing it when you don’t get it.

I think about the coworkers of mine who were famously opaque. You tried to reel them into a conversation and they’d keep it all at the surface. There was no way to truly get into the inner workings of their mind, not when you couldn’t find the key, the keyhole, or even the door. But then a conversation about a recently-filled job opening would come up. They’d remain quiet the whole time until you’d find out, almost like a whisper tucked inside a corner, that they actually applied for that same job and they were admittedly a little bummed they didn’t get it. It’s then you realize it was probably scary for them to stretch themselves, to possibly expose their soft side, the side that actually wants things it does not always name, and, of course, this is why they never said anything in the first place. They didn’t want to hear from an entire room how qualified they were or weren’t for a job; they wanted a quick email alerting them one way or another, hopefully after an interview.

I think about this a lot because this has often been me. A little scared to stretch out because Imposter Syndrome is real – a true double whammy when you’re a writer and a teacher – and because you just never really know how people feel about what you’re doing. We are all bound up in our own insecurities and hopes and fears. We inevitably project them on others. We are human.

So if you find a winery that’s made a successful side business out of sour grapes, know this: they exposed their soft spot many times and in many ways and found a way to make the best of it. That’s something to celebrate.

At any concert you attend, you’re likely to see an electric guitar weaving in and out of the music. Sometimes playing rhythm. Sometimes a ridiculously skilled lead solo, reaching for the upper limits of virtuosity without crashing into the melodic sun. But regardless of the purpose, you could isolate this guitar from anything else around it and hear its electrified presence very, very clearly. It would not matter if you strummed, picked, or even whispered across the strings; sound would come out in an unmistakable way. It would demand to be heard.

Guitar began as a diversion away from struggling with the trumpet. What started off as some good clean fun in the 5th grade brass section had, by 8th grade, become tedious and full of friction. I couldn’t hide my struggles with pitch so easily. I couldn’t avoid being in the bottom half of the trumpet troupe whenever we had sectionals. It was hard to be a Deaf man playing trumpet when you couldn’t isolate your sound. You had to trust what you were playing didn’t stand out amidst the chorus of blares alongside you. But guitar? Guitar you could isolate. And you could especially do so with an acoustic guitar in an empty house, strumming chord after chord, singingly loudly and very badly until your parents arrived home. Trumpet practice couldn’t compete with Carson Daly’s TRL. But TRL couldn’t quite compete with the possibilities of guitar.

There was just one hangup: just like I wanted power and noise in my hearing aid, I wanted a louder guitar. Initially, there was no amp or pickup to plug in with. And strumming softly with my fingers just didn’t quite push the notes pass the threshold of what I could not only hear but could actually enjoy. It felt, at first, like another instrument inaccessible to me. That is, until I was given a pick. From the first time I struck those six strings, a pick wedged between my thumb and index finger, I felt free. I couldn’t quite say anything was possible. But I could say a lot more was possible than any amount of trumpet practice could provide.

The pick was the key to unlocking the sound I desired. It made the guitar just loud enough without losing its warm. I would suffer through the dial-up Google searches looking for songs with chords I felt I could play (basically: anything that did not have an F or a bar chord). Sometimes I’d use the picks so much I’d lose them. They’d find their way into very pocket in my wardrobe except in the pocket I wore at precisely the time I wanted to play. So I resorted to playing with the top of my nails. Little did I know the constant beating against these fingertip shields would cause nailbed trauma, little white spots looking like breaking white waves amidst a beige nailbed sea. I spent so much of my life worried it was a hygiene thing, that I didn’t wash my hands enough. That girls would eventually hold my hand and recoil in a hurry, utterly disgusted by my lack of nailbed care.

But no. All it meant is that music had once again enveloped me in a way a little pain couldn’t get in the way of.

Whenever I think about making or holding space for others, I think about carpentry. I dream of simple tables made with simple materials, products of the middle ground between utility and artistry. Sometimes they’re stained. Sometimes they’re bare, reminders of the trees they once were. But these tables, they are not here to admire. They are not here to be eaten upon. They are not here to be decorated or inserted into Pinterest dream boards. No, these tables are here for one purpose only: to hold weight.

Whenever I think about the pressure we feel as humans, both self-inflicted and pushed upon by others, I think of a stack of books, papers, and other rectangular tedium, smushed and piled atop each other, a leaning, swerving column over ever-shifting gravity. The forearms begin to flare up. The weight cannot be held much longer. And so the body shifts, in ways both awkward and dangerous, to change the center of the situation. To find something approaching comfort. It’s bound to fail. The pile will clatter to the floor, a cacophony of failure, overextension, and demoralization all crinkled together.

In this metaphor, there’s only one way to help: to tap the person on the shoulder and guide them in the direction of this particular table. To slowly move in unison with their hands, nudging them towards the boundaries of this wooden place of respite. All the responsibilities and worries and fears and deadlines still exist. They’re not going anywhere, still stacked high above everyone nearby. But for a minute, if only a minute, the person can feel their way back to something normal. They can rediscover the contours of a healthier body. They can remind themselves of what of these pressures they have control of and which they do not. They can gather themselves and begin again, a bit stronger than before, still weary but always, always thankful for that safe space in their time of need.