Reading Into My Writing

It’s as uncomfortable and predictable as Bob Barker telling you to spay or neuter your pets.
I’ve been absorbing negative feedback from my annual Christmas letter. Tonight it was my dad relaying that my uncles and grandfather bark about it. A couple months ago it was a buddy of mine who, despite 8+ years of degree-less college, has yet to decide what he wants to be when he grows up.
I’m most acutely aware of these comments, as this year’s printed edition hits mailboxes starting tomorrow. I can’t change the content now. So, I sit here tonight and wonder if tomorrow I will be offending people anew, boring them again, drawing another round of rolled eyes.
From the positive comments and jokes from my college buddies, I know that it’s a lot to read. [Hence, this year’s addition is 33% (two pages) shorter.] Even though I break the piece up into magazine sidebar-style stories, it gives the impression that we think we’re living full lives.
We are.
And people apparently resent that. They consider this Christmas letter as my annual peacock dance to show my feathers—one-sided one-upsmanship. Like my childhood Christmas phone calls, where one of my best friends and I compared what we got for Christmas. Like I’m making up for all the show and tell I never had.
I know the knock. I’ve heard people whisper and write about my arrogance. In college I was a punk. My writing grades were easy. My graphic design projects, as a minor, competed regularly with the art majors’ work for top grades. My senior writing portfolio garnered a perfect score from the dean of education. At my only career job before BiPlane Productions, I worked for the best and won superlative amounts of design awards in multiple states and in national competitions.
Looking for esteem and acceptance, I’ve told other people what they didn’t need or care to know. I’ve been a sore winner, a “look at me” hard worker. I’ve tried to gain respect through what I do instead of who I am.
But I’ve also read Proverbs’ warning to “Let another man praise you and not your own lips.” My old boss, a phenomenal person and philanthropist, entrepreneur and business innovator—and a steady Christian—advised me on how to accept compliments and defer praise, how to push toward superlative excellence and humility.
And I’ve tried to implement his and God’s advice. I’ve tried to emulate Rex Schrader and Gene Klingaman and Woody Torrence. I’ve intentionally edited my Christmas letters with that in mind. I ask my wife, who could care less what people think of my success, to edit what might have slipped through my sifting.
These Christmas letters are the annual connections I have with many people: extended relatives, prospective or long lost clients, and friends in former home towns. They answer, “Where are they now?” and, “I wonder what they’re up to.” They transcribe our years for future years and help me ponder my life 12 months at a time. They push me to consider what matters and if I’m accomplishing what I audibly intend.
I’m a writer. People know that. They’ve read my boring book. I don’t think it’s the length that’s the major problem. In fact, when I apologize for the length, I usually am rebutted with, “No, man, I read the whole thing,” and sometimes with the additional, “It’s a good read.” I’m a designer. People know that. This perennial project has to be polished and newsworthy to maintain my intentionally-honed brand as a professional creative living a “creative nonfiction” life. That brand helps provide the comfortable income which I’m blessed to receive from people who, for the most part, are a pleasure to serve.
But I will not be ashamed of success because others don’t share it. I can’t raise the salaries of my peers. I can’t make their jobs as rewarding in the multiple ways mine is. I can’t bless them the way God has blessed me. I don’t flaunt my wages, giving numbers only to my fellow-entrepreneur and similarly-waged dad and a very short list of enquirers that includes my accountant—and not my Christmas letter list. Conversation partners know I paid a bunch for my new computer, which has contributed to the increase of my per-hour income by over 30%. And I’m proud of my used car, bought for $2,000 under Blue Book. It’s not wrong to execute good business and well-planned purchases.
I struggle to hold my experiences to myself. I travel. I can’t sit still. I can’t spend my vacation and savings to do what I can do in my living room—just somewhere else. I can’t travel on tour buses like all the Asian folks I saw in New Zealand. I want a life where LIFE is not saved for retirement. I want memories as vivid as the pictures. I find pleasure and stories in simple things. It’s the home schooler in me. It’s the perpetual kid that, I hope, lives somewhere in all of us.
It shouldn’t be a crime for me to relate that to a list of people in my life and work. It’s like grandparents who talk about their little ones in “world’s greatest” shirts and all the new-parent peers of mine posting almost countless pictures of their babies online. People talk about things they love. It’s human. It’s natural. It’s the part of life that gets people through the parts they don’t like.
And I’m a people. Last time I checked, anyway.
I love most of my life. I love living it and talking about it. Reminiscing on my progress shapes big, colorful hopes for the future. My memories warm me; they encourage me; they humor me. Is it arrogant to think they might resonate that way in others, too? If so, would humility dictate I keep LIFE to myself?
Hopefully, I’ll be able to answer that question before next year’s yule time tome hits the post office.