Hello Reader,

Happy Halloween. It’s the one night a year we invite fear in on purpose, dress it up, and hand it candy.

Tonight, most clocks fall back an hour. Mine won’t. Where I live, the time stays put this year, which is new. So tomorrow the calendar turns to November while the clock on my wall carries on as if nothing changed. It feels like subjective and objective time colliding: the season says one thing, the clock says another.

November has always had two names for me. Some years it’s NOvember, a month for saying no, for grounding, for clearing space. Other years it’s NOWvember: add a W and it becomes a month for what I want to do, now. This year I’m colliding the two. I’m saying no to anything new so I can say now to what’s already in motion: reworking my membership, and a writing side quest that has claimed my late nights.

That collision comes with fear. The fear that saying no means falling behind. The fear that saying now to too many things means doing none of them well. And under both, the quiet fear November always brings: the year is visibly running out.

Last week I mentioned the emotional spectrum behind this newsletter’s name. Yellow is fear. Green is will. And the most famous Green Lantern of all, Hal Jordan, has an interesting history with both.

When Hal first showed up in the comics, the ring chose him because he was entirely without fear. Decades later, the writers revisited that. In the revised version, Hal was chosen because he could overcome great fear. The first is something you’re born with. The second is something you practise.

Kyle Chandler, who plays Hal in the new Lanterns series, sees him the same way: “a purely human character” who has to “overcome those fears and yet still get the job done.”

That’s the version I believe in. Will, the ninth principle of productiveness, isn’t the absence of fear. As I put it in the book, productiveness “doesn’t ask you to pretend you’re fearless. It just asks you to keep going anyway.” Fear doesn’t disqualify you from will. It’s the condition will was made for.

So I’m not going into November trying to outrun anything. The yellow light makes everything look like a deadline. I’d rather carry the fear with me, say no where I mean it, say now where I mean it, and let will sort out which is which.

What are you afraid November will prove? Hit reply and tell me. Naming it is usually the first bit of will.

The Final Flicker

Fearless was never the job. Carrying the fear forward is.

See you later,
Mike

P.S. The Will chapter of Productiveness spends time with five different Green Lanterns and the five kinds of will they carry. If that’s your kind of thing, it’s here.

Thanks for reading. Your time is valuable, and I don’t take it for granted. In a world pulling us in all directions, thanks for choosing The Lantern.