The Gift and Curse of Blindly Following

It was cold this morning, but my heavy-duty Carhartt sweatshirt insulated me as I ventured to my first of many plumbing jobs. With my battle-hardened wrench in hand, and various knives and other tools jangling in my pockets, I shimmied under a leaking sink and got to work.

Those passing by would typecast me as a plumber. To be fair, that’s what I am, at least right now — there in my soiled Carhartt work shirt, canvas work pants, and steel-toed boots. But a year ago, I challenged myself to complete one audiobook per day to see if it’ll turn me from a plumber into something else.

Anyone spotting the wireless earbud nestled like a sleek black caterpillar in my left ear would assume I was pumping rap or rock music. Actually, I was a third of the way through an audiobook entitled, The Creative’s Curse, by Todd Brison — one of sixty audiobooks I’ve purchased in the last month, bringing my total purchased audiobook count up to one-thousand-and-eighty-two. If you tack on the audiobooks from the library and YouTube, I’m closer to three-thousand.

I never intended to become an audiobook junkie, but I thank the faux-blindness for that.

To further explain, I am visually-impaired and cannot look at cell phones, television, or computers for prolonged periods. The last printed book I read was Don Quixote, which I stopped after the third chapter, seventeen years ago. I also struggle with prolonged eye contact and writing anything on paper. In the absence of these stressors — sometimes my eyes just hurt for the sake of hurting as a reminder that life can, at times, resemble the Kafkaesque.

I keep my faux-blindness a secret from most people, especially my employers, because it has gotten me fired before. Plumbing, which doesn’t require much reading or much computer work, provides a rare sanctuary where I can still earn an income without staring at Excel spreadsheets. So, a plumber I became — partly by choice, partly to keep buoyant in the digital age.

Just like Batman rose from his personal tragedy to embody that which once terrorized him, I have learned to approach things blindly and mold it into my identity. As a rule, I ignore Amazon reviews, because I cannot waste eye sight reading one-star insidious opinions from people who’ve never dared to write anything of their own. And I abhor Yelp reviews where people, indignant about having to wait in line, write scathing revenge pieces with the intention of ruining businesses.

This is why I blindly visited a really great Mediterranean restaurant last week for the first time based on nothing more than a hunch. I also blindly purchased sixty audiobooks during Audible’s most recent sale, basing my selections solely on the titles, cover art, and the way the concepts flirted with my intrigue.

After my massive audiobook purchase, The Creative’s Curse lingered in the middle of my long list of fresh audiobooks. Monday March 21, 2022 was the day it stood out — probably because, at first glance, its smart design led me to believe it was a Brett Easton Ellis book, which would’ve been perfect on a cold dreary day like this! (Could this cover not be an alternate cover for Ellis’s American Psycho?)

I immediately braced for disappointment when Brison began narrating his own audiobook. Why do authors do this? I thought. It almost always fails. Leave it to the pros!

From the sound of it, Brison had recorded it at his personal residence due to the occasional truck passing by and the occasional clicking noises as he paused and restarted the recording.

Audible allows customers to return audiobooks after a reasonable “sampling” period. Before coming to any conclusions though, I continued wading blindly into the creative world Brison hoped to show me.

After listening to back-to-back well-produced audiobooks so many weeks in a row, the little quirks in The Creative’s Curse turned out to be a welcome relief. It was time for something starkly different than Scott Brick’s patently bulletproof narrations, or the late William Hurt’s masterful narration of The Sun Also Rises (a personal favorite).

Though I doubt it was intentional, I came to enjoy… and even long for the moment when trucks passed by in the background. It offered the perfect mix of making me feel I was there vs. it sounding like a guy recording an audiobook in the bathroom.

I’ve encountered a lot of misses with inspirational artist-type books like Brison’s— the types where a whimsical dreamer-turned-author urges you to rip off your neck tie, open your office window, and let your imaginary artist wings carry you to your creative destiny while he continues working at the local coffee shop for a pittance.

Though I’d never heard of Brison, nor have I previously listened to any of his work, The Creative’s Curse brimmed with authenticity and a little bit of grit in small doses. Due to the recording style, he offered a sense of a buddy inviting you into his house to genuinely guide you past your insecurities and fears — not so that you can follow his path per se, but so that you can discover your own. Even the best writers can’t fake this; Brison spoke it from the heart, because he has floundered and blindly searched like so many of us.

Using Audible’s bookmark feature, I tagged plenty of sections to revisit. Most profound out of all the bookmarks I made was the line: “If you only ever do what people tell you to do, you will not create the things they never dreamed of.”

This line was so crisp, that I replayed it at least four times before recording a copy of the sound bite and forwarding it to some friends.

The Creative’s Curse was a concise two-hours and forty-four minute journey packed with unique, empirical quips like this. The book wasn’t too short, as to make it feel like a podcast, and not so long that it became tedious.

More than once, Brison mentioned his blind foray into writing content for Medium.com — a website I had never heard of until he mentioned it in this audiobook. He hadn’t expected much, but had kept at it on a consistent basis. Then, magically, his writing gained traction. I respect that he was as bewildered by the results as anyone; he didn’t chalk it up to anything other than good luck, decent writing, and persistence (things any of us can plug into).

Brison suggested his readers try writing for Medium, and seeing what happens. No matter what you are (even a faux-blind plumber), where you come from, or how inadequate you think you might be — just try. Because why not? What have you got to lose?

Today, on Monday, March 21, 2002, I blindly followed his advice.

I have set a goal for writing at least one story per week in addition to completing at least one audiobook per my original plan to evolve from a plumber into something new. Thank you for reading my first of many articles.