michael-dean-k/

It's an obligation to take risks so your life becomes an adventure, epic, a quest with an unknown end. There will be a thousand appeals to practicality. To this end, I wonder if ever an essay has been written to justify gambling. I don’t gamble much, but when I do, I do it extremely. I try to get it over with as quickly as possible. What I mean is that I don’t spend $10-20 per hand and try to enjoy gambling all night. I want the experience of a single intense moment where way too much money is at stake. Nothing devastating, but enough to feel like an idiot if you lose it. I know gambling addictions are very real, but I do not relish to relive the sting of losing $500 in a second. It's mostly a test. If the sting is strong, I'm weak. Myopic. Perhaps the occasional stupid risk is not immoral, but formative. For the vast majority, their ultimate sin is to have never risked enough. They sit on enormous potential and play everything safe and predictably. If you can’t take pointless risks, how will you take important ones?

John Irving:

“If you don’t feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn’t very vital.”

The trick is finding the edge without going over the edge—arriving at the edge without seeking it, without using it as a clutch.

How might you write in a style that might betray everyone’s impression of you? What could you write that might get you fired or cancelled? To be mythological, what would get you crucifies? Obviously, these questions are extreme, but they nudge scared writers in the right direction, out of their shell of extreme self-consciousness.