Yesterday, I did something I never imagined I would do.
I listened to myself. Not an interview Not an old recording. I listened to myself reading The Distance.
Using AI, I created a narrated version of the essay. It wasn't perfect, but it was close enough that I stopped thinking about the technology and started listening to the words.
That surprised me.
The Distance is probably the most personal essay I've ever written. In fact, I almost didn't publish it. Right up until the moment I pressed send, I wondered whether I had gone too far. Most of what I write is built around principles. The Distance explained where those principles came from.
It removed the distance.
I've heard my voice played back to me before. Interviews. Conversations. Recordings. But the principal character in those wasn't me. This time it was. Strangely, it wasn't what I expected. Reading The Distance before it was published carried more emotion than hearing it read back to me. I don't know if there's a psychological explanation for that. All I know is this.
It was quieter than I expected.
There was no scrolling. No editing. No changing a sentence because it suddenly didn't sound quite right. For seven minutes, I sat with the younger man who lived those experiences and the older man who eventually found the words to explain them.
Not to judge him. Not to rewrite him. Just to listen.
For years I've believed that writing isn't about telling people what to think. It's about giving them enough of your own experience that they can find something of themselves in it. Maybe that's why hearing the essay affected me differently. A voice carries things the printed page can't.
The pauses.
The restraint.
The moments where you almost hear someone choosing the next sentence before they say it. Beginning this week, every Thursday after The Standard is published, I'll also release an audio reading of the essay on YouTube. Not because everyone prefers to listen. But because I've come to believe that some essays lose something when they're silent.
Maybe that's what surprised me.
The words hadn't changed.
I had.
And perhaps that's why hearing them felt different from writing them.
Some stories are meant to be read.
Some stories should be heard.
Link to audio version of The Distance