Do you ever write something and think, This will never fly? That it’s just too weird to share?
Same here. My notebooks, laptop, Notes app, and Google docs are stuffed with ideas that may or may not become stories.
Sometimes I think that some of these thoughts and ideas for stories or a blog post or — whatever — just seem too bizarro, too out there for public viewing.
Sometimes I worry that sharing too much of the weirdness that goes on in my brain could alienate others.
Yes, I’m guilty of self-censorship.
And then I think about all the weirdness around us, and how so much of it is good and pleasurable and thought-provoking and exactly what our weird reality needs.
After all, the best art is weird for its time. Only when it gets accepted into the mainstream does it cease to be weird. or as weird.
Three months ago, one of my favorite weirdo writers and artists, Austin Kleon, posted something under the title “Be the weird you wish to see,” and I thought, What a great idea!
And then I found this video by creativity expert Daniel Pink about finding one’s life purpose, and according to Pink, the first step on that journey is to ask ourselves, “What made me weird as a kid? ” (YouTube clip.) “As kids,” Pink says, “we gravitate toward the things we love. We don’t worry about if they’re cool or normal. And those early fascinations can be indicators for what drives us.”
Back to Kleon: on Father’s Day weekend, he wrote about how the classics are weirder than we think they are.
For example: within 50 pages of War and Peace, a bunch of drunks tie a policeman to a bear and throw them in the river. … Other classics that were much weirder than I expected: Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, R. Crumb’s adaptation of The Book of Genesis, and maybe the weirdest of them all, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.
– Austin Kleon
Where would literature be without these weird classics, and the weirdos who created them?
Weirdness is a virtue
Our weirdness is what makes us who we are. We should embrace our weirdness.
This is a thought I’ve hung on to since last summer, when soon after the Democratic and Republican conventions, Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s pick for vice president on the Democratic ticket, started calling their political opponents “weird.”
As soon as I heard about this tactic, my heart sank. Weirdness is a virtue, I thought. Or at least it should be. I’m no political strategist, but to my way of thinking, the Democrats ought to own that label. They should be the party of the weird.
Yes, the “Republicans are weird” sick burn caught fire on social media for a blip, but when it came time for Americans to cast votes, it seems it didn’t help the Harris-Walz cause.
The lesson here, I guess, is for us to heed the call of the weird, to pursue what we love, and see where it takes us.
As one of my all-time favorite weirdos, Hunter S. Thompson, proclaimed in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
– Hunter S. Thompson
We could use a few Hunter S. Thompsons these days.
Top image created by the author with AI
Andy writes! 
I’ll always be grateful I had a weirdo for a boss. Your professional veneer was impeccable, but I knew there was an absurdist beneath that crisp shirt and silk tie.