This is either something you can relate to or not — and you’ll know quickly if you can.

Other people are out there and you aren’t.

The internet has made spying easier than walking to the fridge. So we can check in on people doing cool things or great things anytime. You could even say most of the things we see are from people doing something cool and fascinating – the others aren’t posting much, aren’t sharing many videos.

And encountering these examples causes a subtle ache in the chest cavity.

This phenomenon isn’t a “condition,” but it could be. Aching Vocation Syndrome or Rotting Potential Disorder. I had it awhile (with occasional latent flair-ups).

People often attribute the willingness to try things publicly to confidence. Maybe that’s it, but I think there’s something else at play. I think in certain people there’s a natural bias toward action over reflection. And in many ways, it’s better to be a reflective person than a reckless one. Except when it comes to assessing what you’ve done in life. That’s a huge point in favor of recklessness.

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

When I meet or observe people who are ardently pursuing their dreams in a public way, the first reaction is something close to pity. I wonder if they are deluded enough to think themselves that special. But then you check back with these people. And you see progress. They are going further. Getting better at what they do. Getting happier, too. They’ve gotten a bit broken and those places have strengthened. And my pity becomes envy.

In a story called “White Angel,” Michael Cunningham writes this great line: “The secret of flight is this: you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws.”

That ability, that immediacy, is near impossible for people addicted to thinking.

This is a true paradox of those with interesting things to say, creative types, readers, songwriters, poets who spend a lot of time alone figuring out secrets, people who understand how complex and layered reality is. They are too aware of how little they know to make noise about what they’ve discovered. Find me the poet laureate with a number one podcast.

How screwed up is this: Everything about the creative mindset is set up to oppose the act of creation itself.

Creatives are:

• open to possibilities to the point of paralysis
• hyper-aware of clichés (and would rather die than repeat one)
• wanting to try new things but know in advance most will not work
• addicted to novelty
• disdainful of routine
• hostile to discipline
• fearful of uniformity
• unwilling to be confined to a category — and everything that is created is subject to a category

For these good reasons, their most common disposition is silence. Life itself becomes a theory.

The trouble is, if you, who have something original to express, won’t express it, that leaves a blank space in the tapestry of thought and achievement that ought to have been a rich color. And slowly our content feeds will get grayer and grayer.

That full Hemingway passage goes like this:

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

If you’ve got a lot to say and you’re silent, maybe the world won’t kill you – but that’s just because you’re already dead.