About you: The ideal reader

The mysterious elusive ideal reader. . . ?

It is commonly put forth in writing circles that you must define your ideal reader — and do it with such clarity you can see the twinkle in her eye and the beauty mark quivering above her lip.

You’re supposed to imagine this ideal reader’s wants and dislikes. What he hopes for his future, the hassles he’s facing right now, his inclinations, lifestyle, pets, peeves, pursuits . . . his inner fears, his outer persona, what’s in his wallet, what’s in his heart.

You do this exercise to be precise in how you target your subject matter.

When you sit down to write for this person you clear away all that this person doesn’t care about. 

Well, this ideal reader is you.

Let me tell you about you.

Pull up a chair, get intimate with your device, we’re gonna get personal.  

Oooohhh, it’s spooky, isn’t it — how I know so much about you that I can divine you’re reading from some manner of digital device . . . Yeah, baby, I’ve done my research!

Here’s what I know about you:

You’re bi-curious. You’re curious about your creative source, you’re curious about your spirit source.

You want to expressify. You want to reach inside with both hands and pull out the riches you know are there. 

And if you’re like me — or any three-year old for that matter — you want to play in it no matter how messy things get. You can always clean up later.

You want a robustly lived life.

You want to connect uber-meaningfully with others.  

You want to feel the pulse of the universe in your temples as you grapple with challenges.

You want your spiritual understanding to reflect the great and raw breadth of experience you’ve had in your years. You don’t need rules, you require exploration. 

You want work to be play. You want to be compelled to such a degree by your work that you become lost in it.

You want to create — and you want to subside. You want the pleasures as well as the growth.

You want your days to matter. 

Me too.

Let’s tease out the infinite in the ephemeral together. 

Let’s imbibe from the hookah du spiritus. Let’s combine irreverent spiritual references to drug paraphernalia while jauntily striding across three languages. One of them a dead language. Because we have no problem standing athwart the centuries, one toe here, one toe there, all the other toes wriggling about, landing in God knows what territories and times.

Let’s be playful about it.

The ones we admire are the ones who do it with a wink and a smile. 

If it’s nothing but slogging through task after joyless task to accomplish a goal, then we’ll pass — we’ll follow someone else’s blueprint. 

We’re here to learn from the impish ones — the soulful ones — the happy ones — the sated-on-life ones.

Oh — there’s one more thing about you I forgot to mention. You’re muy sexy too. You can’t help it. It’s who you are. That’s your cross to bear.

So on now, on with us, let’s explore this wildly beating heart of a creatively-engaged existence together. 

For you —

Evan Griffith
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