LISTENING

By Clay Stafford

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I always believed that human glory and life’s meaning were found in the senses: what I saw, touched, felt, heard, smelled, and tasted as I sped down the passing lane of accomplishment. These things provided the richness of living, complementary to the mountainous regions of sentience, the arcs and trajectories of being, and the hills and valleys of experience, the satisfaction of the present moment, and the excitement of things to come. Moving through those elevations and absorbing the delight of each moment seemed attainable only through effort and discipline, verified by visible signs of progress. Passivity, I believed, would not allow fate to deepen. Nor would acceptance or routine. I was not born intentionally appreciating what surrounded me. It was up to me to seek it out. Without intention or constant effort, something in me dragged me downward, turning me negative, and closed my eyes to the beauty held even as close as a flower in my hand.

For me, work and sacrifice were never separate. I approached my work the same way I approached my love of conduct: as a builder, a creator, someone constructing what I envisioned and leaving nothing to chance, mitigating the risk of even a moment lived without purpose. Committed to experience and beauty and the love of spirit, I lived with the belief and what felt like proof that if I worked hard enough, planned carefully enough, and remained devoted to improvement, the more profound human aspects, such as spirituality, intellectual pleasure, and emotional fulfillment, would arrive on their own. I only needed to lay the tracks. I assumed understanding, timing, and wisdom would naturally follow once the visible work and confirmation to my senses were undeniable. What I did not realize was that the skill that mattered most, the one that would ultimately transform my existence and my relationships, was not something I could see, touch, feel, hear, smell, or taste. It was not visible at all. It belonged to the category of things I assumed would take care of themselves if I were disciplined enough to live an examined, well-lived reality.

Whether innate or shaped through observation as I grew and matured, I came to believe that vitality was shaped entirely by purposeful intention. When something failed to work, maybe a relationship, a decision, or a season of my lifestyle, I tried to fix it the only way I knew how: by adding more effort, more thinking, more explanation, more force, more control. Wasn’t it my responsibility to build an existence I could eventually look back on without regret, one I could reach the end of and say, well done? For me, clarity came from that assertion, from believing meaning could be pressed into place if I pushed hard enough and demanded transformation. It was unsettling to discover that my diligence, the very trait I trusted most, was often working against me.

At one of my lowest points, I realized that one’s lot was more than experience, sensation, and action. Viability, I found, communicates just as clearly when it is encountered quietly, indirectly, and without urgency. Being a fixer revealed its limits in moments that required no solution, situations that asked for no action, and questions that had no immediate answers. I flailed there. I didn’t know how to stand still. I wanted so much more from destiny than what I believed I had been given that I failed to notice what was already present. When this recognition arrived, it did so subtly, yet with quiet unease. The problems that continued to trouble me were not rooted in lack of effort or achievement. They stemmed from failure to listen to things that did not need to be, but were, without asking for my attention.

Hearing and choosing when not to attend was what I had missed. Discernment. Not paying attention for approval or instruction, but being attentive for boundaries, for signals, for the difference between what wanted to be rushed and what needed time. I had to hear the quiet truth that some things were not asking me to act, repair, or improve; they were asking me to stop interfering. And yet, I wasn’t taking heed.

To my surprise, taking into account itself became an act. It was not passive. It required restraint and patience. Concentrating asked me to tolerate uncertainty without rushing to resolve it. It asked me to leave unfinished things unfinished, to resist tidying them up or wrapping them up prematurely. Keeping my ears open meant trusting that clarity sometimes arrived only after I stopped demanding it.

At first, this felt unproductive. From the outside, monitoring resembled hesitation, pausing instead of advancing, waiting instead of fixing. When I stopped pushing, I felt lost. In doing nothing, I wondered what I was doing at all. There were fewer markers of progress, no surge of momentum, no thrill of accomplishment. Slowing down felt uncomfortable in a world and in my own world that rewarded decisiveness and speed. And yet, something began to change.

When I took note instead of forcing outcomes, the quality of my decisions shifted. My perceptions changed. I stopped shaping results that didn’t truly fit. I recognized when something was complete rather than refining it beyond necessity. I learned, often uncomfortably, that others did not always want solutions; they wanted to be heard. Silence, I discovered, could carry weight without being filled, and tuning in altered my understanding of doubt. Uncertainty became information rather than a shortcoming. Things were not broken; they were unresolved, and that distinction mattered. It gave me patience I had never practiced before.

I came to understand that the apparent inactivity of focusing was itself a form of action. It was not instinctive. Like any skill, it was built slowly through humility, repetition, and restraint. It sharpened not through effort, but by stepping back and allowing actuality to reveal itself without interruption. Once perceived, it grew. It became the foundation beneath every visible skill, every tangible accomplishment. Everything I did depended on this quiet test for its truest execution.

The quietness began to permeate my continuation. I found myself longing for it. No amount of effort could replace it. No amount of planning could override it. Without lending an ear, progress dissolved into noise. A new reality had come. And in returning to the full circle, I discovered something unexpected: even stillness had direction. I had not underestimated listening because I considered it unimportant. I underestimated it because it was quiet.

THE CHAIR IS STILL THERE

By Clay Stafford

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Mostly working from home for the majority of my life, there was no boss to meet, no comptroller checking my clock-in for work, no meetings I had to be on time for, only me, waking up and stretching in bed, thinking of how I envisioned my day to play out.

Most days were and are filled with excitement. I knew what I was going to do. I loved what I did. I was blessed to be able to do it. Most mornings were filled with ambition and excitement, so I couldn’t wait to get to work and get started. But there were those dreaded mornings when I awoke, stared at the ceiling, and realized there was no fuel in the creative engine for the day. On those mornings, there was no urgency to get out of bed, no spark inspiring me to begin. There wasn’t even resistance. In the dim light of the morning sun coming through the cracks of the closed plantation shutters, there was simply a hollow quiet where momentum typically was and should have been. Those moments felt empty, nothing resembling the welcomed heaviness of life, just a distant void, as though everything that normally mattered had somehow, during the night while I was dreaming, slipped down the hallway to another bedroom and closed the door, sometimes even locking it behind it, climbing into the bed and pulling the covers over its head.

Those were days that felt like failures even before they began, and because I predetermined them while lying in bed, they usually turned out as I expected. I used to think I could only show up for my life when my inner world was in agreement, when want and purpose matched, when I knew why I was doing something, and when the effort made sense. I could only do things when I felt like it or when the meaning was clear. When that alignment was absent, I assumed the day was already lost and a wasted day of failure lay ahead. I felt it in my heart and even in my bones. I hadn’t yet learned that the real discipline of my life wasn’t built on feeling ready, but on returning.

It wasn’t until later in my life, when maybe maturity or practice, or even serendipitous events, proved me wrong, that I realized these mornings were simply a different kind of threshold, their own unique entry into a day that, at first glance, felt formless and uninspired. Somewhere along the way, I learned that discipline, what I needed to create the perfect day, was less about preplanning, force, or even intention, but more about presence.

I don’t know when my thinking started to shift. I certainly didn’t make it happen. I didn’t will it. It certainly wasn’t some trite self-help or productivity hack. It didn’t even arrive with some revelation. It came oddly and unplanned, as a habit. Whether I had the vision for the day or not, I got my coffee as usual, set up my desk, and sat down in my chair to work, even when I didn’t know what I wanted to work on or, if I did, even when I wasn’t inspired. Motivation didn’t earn me a spot at my desk. Routine did. On those days, I kept the bar low. I didn’t promise much to those hours except the assurance to my computer that I’ll be close by if needed. No plans were negotiated, no meaning defined, and rarely was any enthusiasm offered to the Muse as tribute. Sometimes on those days, I thought my purpose in life was to drink a cup of coffee, watch my birdfeeder, and ponder, in the world of evolution, what crazy lizard found itself jumping out of a tree and realizing it could fly, thus creating a new species of birds. In other words, with no plans or inspiration, I sat there because I didn’t know what else to do.

It surprised me at some point how little was required to sit there. It was freeing. Even on those hollow mornings, the chair was still there, waiting. I didn’t need conviction. I didn’t need direction. I didn’t need to believe that anything I was doing mattered. I only needed not to leave. I needed to sit with whatever drifted through my mind. The common thread behind it all was my chair, on productive days and on days of nothing. It was always sitting there, consistent, no matter where my head was. So, I returned to it, some days with more fervor than others, but always with a refusal to hand over control to the weather outside (I write outside on my porch) or even the weather, no matter how calm or turbulent, going on inside of me.

Those neutral days of nothingness were not heroic. They were days that neither lifted nor dragged, days that offered no motivational or dramatic reason or inspiration to move forward, but at the same time, no compelling reason not to be there. It seemed on those days that the world asked nothing of me other than attendance in that chair, across the lawn from the birdfeeder, pondering the processes of the past few million years.

When I think back on my own evolution now, what strikes me is not how much time I wasted sitting there, but rather how honest those hours were. Out of boredom, I did begin to tinker, but without the need or motivation to impress, accelerate, or aim beyond the moment, I moved straight to the essentials as they popped into my head. It was all rather casual. There was no adornment, no performance, no word count, no chasing of superiority. Just small, impulsive, inner-driven activities, whether rain or shine, just some sort of private continuity with days more productive, but with no invisible audience or ego applauding, but at the same time nothing left undone. When inspired, sitting in the chair, I did what I felt inspired to do, letting direction come from the nothingness.

Over time, something shifted. Those neutral (I wouldn’t call them wasted) days, those unremarkable returns to the chair each morning, began to alter the way I understood myself in the same way that I could envision lizards growing wings millions of years ago. I don’t think I ever patted myself on my back for my consistency of sitting in a chair (that hardly seems a heroic act), but I did begin to trust it as an inkling of something I couldn’t put my finger on began to take form in my consciousness, in my being. Showing up and sitting down, I began to sense that I did not need to feel aligned with my work or even with myself to remain connected. Just drink coffee and watch the birds, and occasionally look at my computer screen. I didn’t need the weather, inside or out, to give me permission. Before I stepped into the day, I needed to go to my chair and sit. And, surprise to me, somewhere along the way, my fingers would find their way to the keyboard, and I would start to type. Somewhere by the end of the day, I would pause and look back on all that I had accomplished, even though I had had no preplanned direction.

Trust accumulated in ways I couldn’t have articulated then, but it did soften the drama around the difficulty of being aimless. It quieted the argument between desire and duty. It reframed commitment as identity rather than effort. I began to see that most of what endures in life is built not on bursts of certainty but on the steady, unimpressive, evolutionary cadence of return.

The curious, but also understandable, thing is that the work of my life didn’t constantly improve in those days, but my relationship with my work, and even myself, did. Sitting down in my chair became less conditional, less dependent on mood or inspiration, or the unpredictable tides of self-belief or raw motivation. Sitting down in my chair became, instead, something like a morning welcome, a companionship, coming with the predictability and comfort of knowing that the sun will rise each day and I will sit: steady, imperfect, patient.

Looking back, I never found the dramatic clarity I once believed I needed to move forward. I saw something quieter. I discovered that life continues, like birds in flight, even when eagerness does not. I found that meaning doesn’t always come hand in hand with willingness. I discovered that neutrality is fertile in its own way. We don’t need a parade; we only need a chair.

I once thought that discipline was a loud, cinematic declaration, something founded in great ambition or proven with relentless, knock-the-walls-down drive, but the truth, for me, instead lived in a place outside on the back porch, an ordinary chair, waiting without fanfare, and asking for nothing other than my presence. “Come as you are,” it called. “If nothing else,” it said in its Southern way, “just sit a spell.”

Perhaps the unexpected lesson for me is this: the parts of life that endure are not always those born from passion, certainty, or predetermination while lying in the bed in the morning and staring at the ceiling with the morning light coming in through the shutters, but instead it is from the steady, unremarkable decision to get my coffee, in my routine, and sit in my chair long enough for meaning to find its way back. The chair is always waiting.

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer, filmmaker, and founder of the Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference, Killer Nashville Magazine, and the Killer Nashville University streaming service. Subscribe to his newsletter at https://claystafford.com/.

WORKING WITHOUT AN ECHO

By Clay Stafford

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There are stretches when work and life carry on, yet the world goes strangely muffled, and I’m left facing a reflection I don’t repetitively acknowledge. The first time I became aware of this was after years of working in the collaborative arts of television, film, and theater, when, without those lively moments, without the noise, silence itself became its own uncanny yet welcoming mirror. To this day, the likeness I see unnerves me.

The experience I’m thinking of wasn’t dramatic. Nothing collapsed. Nothing extraordinary happened. I changed where I wrote. I was living in Los Angeles then, surrounded by the hum of other people’s stories. That was all. I was young. I switched employment and went from the noise of collaborative rooms to the hush of a rented space on my own. Nothing refashioned in my profession except the location and the environment. I kept doing what I promised, tending the responsibilities I chose, still delivering work, but without the usual affirmations. Where daily life had once been bustling, there were now no replies in hallways, no nods in breakrooms, no signs in studios that anything I was offering was reaching beyond my own effort. In the absence of feedback, I learned that the material I was writing and the life I was living were now without endorsement, and the meaning of things changed when nothing echoed back.

Without response, the work felt different beneath my hands. I still had the discipline to continue, but without reflection or resonance, I began to feel the dull ache of questions rising from somewhere older than ambition, closer to the ribcage: What is this for? Does any of this matter? Had I mistaken movement or activity for direction? It surprised me how much the small, ordinary reassurances had once steadied me. A single thank-you, a simple hurrah, being noticed in passing, none of it had seemed important at the time, but when it disappeared, I felt the floor shift a little. I realized how soundlessly I had leaned upon them.

What steadied me again wasn’t a surge of motivation or a sudden breakthrough. It was a kind of returning, almost like walking back to the trailhead after getting lost. I noticed that the reasons I began hadn’t dissolved just because no one was nodding along. The values underneath the effort remained, unchanged and unmoved. The silence hadn’t drained them of meaning; it had only stripped away the applause I didn’t know I’d been listening for.

Working without affirmation brought me face to face with a question I hadn’t needed to ask before: did the work matter only when it was witnessed, or did it matter even here, in secret, when there was no audience to gather the story? It was an uncomfortable distinction. There was no performance in that space, no cleverness, just me and the truth of what I cared about.

Staying with the work in that lonely townhouse on Bedford Drive, where jacaranda petals stuck to the windshield, wasn’t about mettle. It wasn’t about proving anything, not even to myself. It felt smaller than that, more silent. I continued because continuing felt more honest than stopping. The pull didn’t come from momentum or reward; it came from alignment, as if turning away would have been a small betrayal of something I couldn’t name.

In that hush, something shifted. It wasn’t confidence or inspiration. It was a steadier posture, days spent without waiting for an echo, returning without asking to be met halfway. There was nothing heroic or cinematic about it. I certainly didn’t feel that. I simply stayed.

Affirmation did come back eventually, and the validity of the choice I had made did come, though in indirect ways I couldn’t have predicted. By then, the ground beneath the work had already changed. It no longer asked to be seen to matter. The meaning of what I did through my work had moved inward, even to a place where applause, even though it later came, couldn’t reach it.

I once believed that meaning required an audience. Now I suspect that the audience only revealed what was true long before anyone clapped. When the echo disappeared, and I kept going anyway, the work stopped asking who was watching and started quietly telling me who I was. It was from there that I became.

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer, filmmaker, and founder of the Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference, Killer Nashville Magazine, and the Killer Nashville University streaming service. Subscribe to his newsletter at https://claystafford.com/.