Are You Inside the Work or Outside the Work?

Are you inside the work or outside the work?

It’s basically another way of talking about status and mastery, but I think it’s a nice shortcut. Where are you? Are you in it—actually doing the thing—or are you outside, staring at the finished product, obsessing over how other people are going to receive it?

My new theory is this: the only real home is inside. That’s the only place you can actually live.

Going outside isn’t “bad.” You can travel there, poke around, check the angles.

You can set up shop - you HAVE to set up shop. That’s what Substack is - a big ol shop that you set up and sell your wares. Come and get em, you scream, fresh hot stories.

But you can’t live in the shop. They’ll try to keep you there with perks the way Google keeps their employees there. And they’ll make you think that the longer you spend there, the better your wares will sell, which might very well be true, but brother you gotta go home.

Back to the work. Back to the life from which the work can bloom. And the work itself. That’s home.

Home is inside the work where you’re enjoying it the way people enjoy gardening, putzing around, clipping a bit here, planting this, trying that, cobbling together a little something you’re proud of, something worth sharing with the world when you hit the market.

This is the pursuit of mastery. Of learning. It feels so much better, like dancing when you’re the only one home. That IS home. The place you can dance with your ideas and materials and fall asleep whenever you want without fear, wake up, make a snack - something fast, and keep going, wondering how to make things better, or different, or worse - you are the maker and the judge, the baker and the fudge.

Your home is the work. Inside the work.