One of my favourite BBC shows is the arty farty Fake or Fortune.

It's like a cross between Indiana Jones and the Antiques Roadshow.

My kind of TV!

I remember downloading a few episodes to my iPad before a flight to New York over 10 years ago. So I’ve been a diehard fan of the show for at least a decade and possibly longer.

But even though I’ve been watching for a heck of a long time, when it comes to paintings, I still know diddly squat.

So I watch bemused as the arty experts examine a potential masterpiece and gush about the deftness of the brushstrokes, the interplay of the colours, how the artist has used light & shade, how they’ve captured movement, the use of negative space and the hidden symbolism of a potato in the bottom left corner of the canvas.

To me, they’re perfectly nice paintings.

They’d look great on the wall of my daily email laboratory, deep within the battlements of Fort Grundy.

But the arty experts can see details, techniques and meanings which I can’t see. 

Having said all that, I do wonder.

I’m sure there are times when a potato in a painting DOES have a deep and significant meaning. I guess a humble potato could serve as a quiet reminder of basic human needs. Perhaps a potato could hint at the beauty to be found in ordinary things. Or maybe a potato could symbolise a connection to the earth.

On the other hand, perhaps it doesn’t.

Call me crazy, but maybe (just maybe!) an artist decides to paint a potato for no other reason than he or she decides to paint a potato. 

Of course, we’re all pre-programmed to look for meanings in our lives. Our ancestors assumed a rustle in the bushes was a predator because if they didn't, they might get clobbered by a hungry sabre-tooth tiger.

But not everything in life has a meaning behind it.

An example:

A year or so ago, author and pathless pather Paul Millerd published my “Back to Work” guest post in his newsletter. He also published it on his Substack and on his website. Altogether, that post has snagged me over 250 new readers and that number is still climbing.

(hi there if you joined via Paul!)

I started writing that guest post two years ago.

Then for some reason I stopped. Months went by where the guest post stayed in draft on my desktop.

So did this hiatus mean I was scared of putting my name out there? Was I procrastinating because of some unresolved inner conflict? Was I doubting myself because of some forgotten childhood trauma?

I could’ve spent hours thinking about all this. 

I've certainly wasted embarrassing amounts of time on questions like these in the past.

But with the benefit of hindsight I can see the only reason I didn’t write the guest post sooner was because I didn’t write the post sooner.

That’s it.

Nothing to decode, dissect or analyse. No grand narrative, profound meaning or emotional subplot.

Just me not writing the post until I wrote the post and an almost hassle-free process which paid off nicely when I did.

Funnily enough, I’m in a similar position now with my new book Don't Quit Your Job. It's been sitting as a final draft on my desktop for months. 

But it’s good to know there's no deep psychological reason stopping me from publishing the book. 

All I need to do is get the cover done, then publish it.

Anyway, we’ve come a long way from potatoes. 

Yet the idea is exactly the same and worth tucking away:

Inaction doesn't have to mean that something's wrong. 

Moreover, the less you analyse your inaction, the more likely you are to act.

While I’m on the subject of growing my newsletter:

If you have an audience who might be interested in the stuff I write about (personal development, finding a freer relationship with work and life at Fort Grundy) and you’d be up for plugging my daily email wares to your audience, hit reply and let’s chat.

Lots of ways we could go about it and I’m very open to any idea that leads to a win/win. I've got lots of ideas too, but it all starts with hitting reply. 

If you're up for exploring, I look forward to hearing from you. 

To fulfilment,

Tom