Probably the best joke I’ve read all week

Sunday morning, sitting at my desk (you know, the cool Victorian writing desk from earlier blogs?) at 10am watching the rain pour down outside on a bleak day that can’t decide if it is winter or still autumn.

10am. These blogs go out at 8am, don’t they? I was going to write this last night, but came down with a case of, well, you’ll see when you read the joke.

I had even planned to go on a bike ride (yup, regular readers have seen me post about some of those adventures in recent weeks too), but with weather like this, well, no.

So, coffee in hand, what to write about today? Well, simply this, to curate a brilliant joke from the latest weekly newsletter from Nick Parker, who, mark your diaries for 5pm UK on Tuesday 5th January, will soon be a guest in conversation with me on #WhatComesNextLive.

By the way, as I typed that date, I am reminded of my constant struggle to speak and write English in “English English”, “Scottish English”, “Caymanian English” and, most of all, “American English”. Why do the Americans say “5pm on January 5th” and the Brits “17:00 on 5th January”. Come to think of it, what’s with the Oxford comma, and, and, am so happy that the trend towards two spaces after a full stop (period?) is coming to an end. Never got that one myself, can’t say I’ve ever written two spaces after a full stop in well over half a million words of daily posts.

Anyway, coming to the joke. A lovely circle around show guests is that Rob Poynton said to me (after we finished recording his appearance on the show) that one newsletter he always reads each week is that of a guy called Nick Parker and that it always contains a nugget or two. I then subscribed and the very next week was totally inspired by Nick writing about “how to read more”, with one line inspiring the post: “the unit of reading is a chapter“. Another post I wrote inspired by Nick was “the art of finishing things“, with the inspiration in part taking the form of writing as a numbered list, as is Nick’s newsletter style. Oh, and on November 26th (26th November?), Nick published: “On Reading: Provocations, consolations and suggestions for reading more freely“, perhaps buy it as a present for someone who may wish to read more. Tip, start with a chapter,

As you can see I haven’t yet got to the joke. The joke was written into Nick’s newsletter and had me feel really glad I didn’t read it while drinking coffee, else some aeropressed coffee would have been sprayed over my screen.

Now, finally, a curation of Nick’s newsletter, with THE joke:

That Explains Things

by Nick Parker, received Friday 11th December 19:45 (late 😉 )

1. Hello hello,
2. So, a few months back, apropros something I said in this newsletter, someone recommended I check out Lichtenbergianism: Procrastination as a Creative Strategy, by Dale Lyles. Straight away, I bought it and read it.
3. Which I am fully aware is pretty much falling at the first hurdle, Lichtenbergianistically.
4. Anyway, I’ve returned to it surprisingly often since. So I thought I’d give you some edited highlights. So by not bothering to get the book yourselves, you’re now getting the benefits of its wisdom anyway. You’re basically nailing Lichtenbergianism already, see?
5. The whole shebang is named after Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 18th-century German physicist, mathematician, and noted putter-off of things. It’s a manifesto for living a pragmatic and productive creative life, by sort of endlessly deferring one creative project by working on a different one.
6. (An approach I wholeheartedly endorse: the blog post I wrote that went viral and changed the course of my business for ever got written chiefly because I was avoiding tackling something else.)
7. There are ‘9 precepts’. No, I’m not going to list them all. Number 3 exhorts you to write ‘abortive attempt’ at the top of any creative endeavour. Number nine is ‘abandonment’, which incorporates ‘you can always come back to it later’, and ‘failure is always an option’. You get the gist. Oh, and there’s an extended discussion on whether there should have been a tenth precept, what it might be, and why it ultimately wasn’t.
8. ‘All models are wrong, but some are useful’ as George Box said.
9. Lichtenbergianism grew out of a group of artist-and-maker friends gathering around a fire once a year to discuss the projects they hoped to complete in the coming year, the projects they had failed to achieve in the previous year, and the projects they’d got on with in the meantime. To be honest, if you have a group of friends you can sit round a fire with once a year and talk about making stuff, you’re halfway to a fulfilling creative life, aren’t you. (Related to Precept 8: ‘audience’)
10. Actually, the thought of sitting round a fire in close proximity to actual other humans talking about anything is practically an erotic fever-dream at the moment tbh. 
11. There’s an invocation you can chant. It’s to the spirit of Ed Wood, the film director of ‘vision, energy and absolutely no talent’. You can chant it to free you from expectations at the beginning of a creative project. I like this bit particularly: 
    • Free us from our capabilities,
    • And strew our path with bad ideas.
    • So many that we cannot help but stumble
    • upon a good one every now and then.
12. We all chanted a version of this at the start of my tone of voice workshop for the Professional Copywriters’ Network in October. Incidentally, there’s going to be another one on Wednesday 17th March next year. Come along! It’ll be ace. We’ll definitely do chanting.
13. Yes, I did put off writing this newsletter, and have ended up sending it out late.
14. Tip? Merry Christmas! Back in January. Bye!