The Nobody Cares Mountain

Laszlo Vad / March 16, 2024

Welcome to Spring! I hope you had a great first 21% of the year.

Me? What did I do?

Thanks for asking — I climbed the Nobody Cares Mountain.

A stick figure labeled "Reader" is sitting on top of a mountain, while another labeled "Me" is climbing up, just arriving to the summit.

The "Me" stick figure stops at the summit and exhales in exhaustion.

Both stick figure say hey to each other.

The "Me" stick figure takes out a paper. The Reader asks what he has there. A new newsletter for you, answers the other.

The reader says: "Great! What took you so long though?

The place where this conversation happens is the Everybody Is Excited About This Summit.

It’s the top of the mountain, high above the clouds. The visible work. The exciting shit. The part of every creative project that people imagine when they think of silly little creative people. Writers in their wooden cabins with steaming mugs and clacky typewriters. Painters in their studio wearing stained coveralls. Composers hunched over a piano, faintly humming and scribbling notes on staff paper.

It’s also the place where the work finally changes hands. Where, you, as the beholder of the art finally get to, you know, behold it.

Yet, it’s called the summit for a reason.

Below the clouds, there’s a whole hostile mountain, grey and craggy, trying to suck the life out of those silly little creative people.

A picture of a cartoon mountain. The top is labeled as the "exciting summit," while the rest is the "Nobody Cares About This" part.

There’s an invisible part to any creative endeavor made up of a lot of legwork. Work that is not exciting, not glamorous, and a lot of the time, not even creative. Yet, you have to do it, otherwise you won’t get to the summit to be your silly little artist self.

It’s the months of tedious research before the writer can get to his cabin. It’s the cleaning of the brushes after each painting session. It’s the tuning of the piano.

Or, in my case, it’s when my previous newsletter provider, TinyLetter, tells me it’s shutting down, so be a lamb, and find a new way to email readers.

The same picture of the mountain, but the nobody cares about it part is carved up into subparts showing humorous messages about the ordeal that is the newsletter moving process.

It’s named the Nobody Cares Mountain for a reason.

And I’m not telling you all of this to make you care. I don’t even care. Believe me, I didn’t become a writer, so I can shop for newsletter software and write privacy policies. (Although, if privacy policies were written by writers, we might all be better off.)

I’m telling you all of this because you might also be a creative person who struggles with the journey up the Nobody Cares Mountain. Like me.

And I want you to know that it’s okay to struggle. That the work you’re doing — while not glamorous — is important. It is what enables you, me, and every other creative to reach the summit and hand that piece of art to the people waiting there.

So good on us for hiking up the Mountain.

And please, keep going.

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