Hello. I missed you. I missed writing way too many words and immediately feeling silly about them the next day, believing I need to delete them all and start again, and then feeling the same the next day, and wondering whether this will ever change.
I missed questioning whether anything I have to say has any merit whatsoever, or if it’s all just an indulgence and the few people who read my words just have no idea what’s good.
I missed thinking I need to hold on to and keep working on everything I do till the end of time. I missed thinking everything I do needs to be perfect.
I missed sticking it out nonetheless, amassing a steaming heap of words — flies swarming — inexpertly strung together to form hapless sentences.
Beginnings suck. Beginnings are the worst thing about life. Remember when you were a baby?
You sucked.
I’m fascinated by just how little beginnings tell you about how the rest of the cycle will unfold: NOTHING. They tell you nothing. Beginnings are fucking hard. Write thousands of words one day, then delete them all to begin again the next.
Again, again, again, againagainagain.
All I ever do is start things. Beginnings are the best! There’s so much goodness in beginnings. Nothing is certain. Everything can change at a moment’s notice. Beginnings are divine.
The Letters are leaving Substack. Idk if this is a surprise to you; probably not.
Being notably absent from anywhere I used to frolic around like a lil lamb once upon a whence, should, at least to myself, serve as a solid indicator I’m long Done With That Place. But alas. Having outgrown or mutated sideways out of a set of limitations that once held me like a snail in its shell must, it seems, somehow shock me into a temporary freeze (which is so funny to me because I’ve been thinking a lot about temperature as it relates to mutation recently. Okay, carry on).
When I come to after the shock has worn off, I remember — OH, RIGHT. I can’t freely create, emote… be where I don’t feel safe. Weird, I keep forgetting that’s a thing.
It’s similar at home currently, coincidentally. It’s been like this since I moved in – I knew I had to get out – but life of late has exposed cracks in the cave I didn’t yet possess the conviction to properly acknowledge.
I started writing a “season” of letters back in December. I was really excited. I loved the prospect of dropping a small book’s worth of words at once, of giving myself the time to peer deeply into whatever was emerging, to go back and forth between “chapters” – to put prolonged dedication and commitment into my words, in a nutshell. To not treat them like disposable cotton swabs, but allow them the space and time they’d need to grow a skeleton, to put on and carry some weight.
The main narrative was, to make it very short, Stepping Into My Power. I planned to make the publication private and put rules of engagement into place. So, to set boundaries around my writing, basically. The season would aim to explain, narrate and lay out the laws of what was happening, because I can’t ever just do a thing and not share What We Learned… (we’ll get back to this in a bit, I think)
Mid-December arrived and my personal life took over. Single mom-itude – mine, at least, at present, still – doesn’t allow for mid-term plans. Interspersed with my health going slightly whack every couple days, the immediacy of childcare issues is the perfect way to deny myself doing the truly, wholly, sustainably satisfying stuff – making fun things and writing from the deep within the deep – the Abysmal. See, there was this whole thing I thought I needed to flesh out about requiring minimal engagement from my subscribers to feel safe enough to continue writing the way I was before my soulmate came along and my cells began to grasp all the ways I’d been overexposing and -extending myself.
Wanna read something shocking? Here’s a passage from said season of Letters I’d been preparing before life/my body/the program/whatever threw a wrench and flattened all my Writing Life’s tires for the time being.
Dear subscriber,
Months ago, I woke up trying not to cry.
In my dream, a person without skin, held together by who knows what, mounted on a rod, like one of the wooden puppets we used to learn to draw with (like Wooden Figure Human Drawing Model Toy Mannequins with Stand Movable Limbs Puppet Art Sketch Models for Art Body Drawing Home Decoration available on Amazon), solemnly, in possession of all their mental capacities, carried a conversation with me while I cowered in a corner trying not to catch their eye, fixing mine on the dinner table in the middle of the room.
That was it, that’s all I remember. The voice was disembodied. Haunting, rasping, deep, rumbling, piercing.* (piercing, like their body was by the rod, get it? Hahahaha oh god fuck why do I find this funny I hate gore) I’d heard it before.
When I was fourteen, I dreamed of my body as a feeding ground. “Pasture for the deer and the bees,” said the voice. My consciousness, a literal sacrifice.
You know, in Human Design terms, I am a martyr. I do have the capacity to go through shitty things so others don’t have to. You can learn from me. You can use me that way.
But I get to choose who may feed on the grass that grows on my limbs. I get to choose who can see me without my skin so they can study the human body by using me as a model. I can put up an electric fence, and I can charge an entrance fee. I can hire a bouncer. You can’t view my inner workings — much less use them — just like that.
ANYWAY. Hiii, welcome back. Don’t worry, that was the most outright uncomfortable part of that letter. At some point, the rest (or what will be left of it) will also be published and you’ll see.
Okay so, we’ve established I originally wanted to make this publication private and require minimal engagement (or else kick people off my list who seemed unappreciative of my oh-so-selfless martyring, yep, lol).
Okay!! But I also couldn’t shake the feeling I was also very, very wrong – not just because I was preparing to do something uncomfortable; yuck “having boundaries,” UGH – but because I *disliked* many of the words pouring out of me. I was unsure whether this was due to solar plexus conditioning, or if it was *real* and maybe I was preparing to (artificially?) assert boundaries I wasn’t actually so clear on –
Dear friend,
I don’t like my tone throughout this email. It’s cynical, it’s kind of harsh, it isn’t nice.
Dear reader,
I’m laughing at myself because I’m policing my tone exactly the way some defined solar plexus people do when they feel even a little bit *confronted.* I’m not warm enough, I’m too high-pitched, too stern. I won’t listen to you. Swaddle me in sweetness and tell me what I want to hear, then we can “talk.”
Dear internet person,
If I wanted to be “brutally honest,” I would share some recent entries in esther’s notebook with you. Honestly, though, I’m not fond of the term “brutally honest.” It’s kinda violent, don’t you think? I don’t want to “use” honesty as a weapon. True honesty confronts. But it doesn’t injure for its own sake. Not others, not oneself. Real honesty loves.
And then, a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon this: Don’t call it a Substack.
I believe I’d read it before, but, you know. Things only land when we’re ready for them. When the mind only requires that last bit of convincing to trust that what’s already underway is somehow its “idea” (lol).
Substack has served me well up till now. After I read that piece, I didn’t think I would leave because of it. I mean, that would mean I made a pretty major creative decision on the basis of what some dude suggested people in general (“I’m not people in general IM AN IN-DI-VID-JU-ALL”) might wanna think about.
But well, yeah. I did think about it a little. And, parallel to thinking about it, I started flirting with other ways to blog, some of them provided by people whose philosophies I find incredibly grounded and sane.
I told myself, and, I mean, it is the truth – this is what I do when somehow, wherever I was before, whatever I was doing, has gone stale. Looking for a new beginning is just a way to avoid the work of processing and enduring the plateau that inevitably arrives after a period of doing something, anything, really, with some regularity.
But, well. It’s been many weeks. And almost a year of trying to “be on Substack” and very, very much failing.
It’s kind of like the way my mind, for several years now, has been acting vewy concewned (☹☹☹) when my appetite wanes for a while and I don’t eat, sometimes for days, without consciously, expressly “fasting,” despite ravenous hunger, despite my temperature dropping, etc. In the absence of other concerning symptoms, the truth here is that my body quite simply needs less input. Sometimes it also needs to not focus for a bit and rest, just be empty. Sometimes the emptiness and resulting deep, cellular relaxation puts me into hyperfocus. It all depends.
I’ve been telling myself to get back the Letters — it’s the right thing!!
Just like mind says that actually, not eating is counterproductive to the long-term goal of losing weight — yes, it is that insidious lol. Notice its main narrative is how I need conviction, determination: my split bridge is in Gate 46 — *the Gate of Determination of the Self.* Also notice it places silly fantasy “goals” that society purports to value above my actual well-being: factually, I am FINE when I don’t eat for a bit. Often, even, I’m better than when I am eating regularly. The only thing not-fine is my mind’s (and sometimes, my actual) yammering about it.
Thus, to get back to Letters: each time I think it’s happening; the next letter is arriving!!!!! It… doesn’t. Or didn’t. Here we are, now, eh.
But today, weirdly (or fittingly?) – on this day of Bigotry/Democracy – in my safe, contained space of wandering and watching the unfolding of what’s inevitable, the following was finally revealed.
It’s not me. I am not the problem. (This in itself is huge for me as a small split, undefined ego and open solar plexus being! just btw)
And – it definitely isn’t you. I thought I needed boundaries around who gets to read me – and I do – but not that way.
What I really need is to not be part of The Instagrammification/Substackification Of Writing.
To whom it may concern,
Letters from the Abysmal will be admission-only starting tomorrow.
It’s taken *many* time, but I now know some arguably important things about why I write. When, what, and to whom, and what I need in return: I must know the audience, I need an exchange, and I’m not after money – no: a paywall will not do (and yes, I still feel the need to affirm this to myself). The internet has become a peep show, and I want no part of it.
Not all of this has proven completely true (we’ll get to what/why) but that last sentence has endured. I do not write to feel seen. I thought this was the case for a long, long time — up till last month, to be honest, even while I was beginning to pack up my small epic of a suitcase of letters.
I do not write to feel seen. I don’t write from a desire to prove myself in any sense (even if this is what ends up happening, as a side effect, sometimes. Even if my mind would like to say it’s because I [insert stupidest reasons for doing, anything, ever, here])
I recently started reading George Orwell’s On Writing and stopped, laughing, on page six, to check his design – yes, he is a defined ego being with close to zero drive to create and/or individuate for its own sake. His Reasons for Writing are, verbatim:
Sheer egoism
Aesthetic enthusiasm
Historical impulse
Political purpose
Supposedly, only these exist — universally — among writers. I mean, these are very noble and honest coming from someone designed to survive with material talent, with the skills to share the patterns about the future survival of humankind. On the Cross of Prevention, no less.
But yeah, I am so, SO, not he. My primary reason for writing is (quite unspectacularly, I find) —
Personal hygiene. From a recent notebook entry:
when I don’t write, I cry a lot
- is it because I’m not writing or am I not writing because I’m crying so much
- everything undistracting seems to make me want to cry and scream
- while the distractions don’t really distract from wanting to cry and scream
WHY NOT JUST JOURNAL THEN, you are quite right to ask. Well!! The tricky thing about the way my voice is designed — what I’ve been unable to put my finger on for most of my life, causing MANY distress and doubt and denial and the whole shebang — is walking the tightrope of innocently influencing the collective whilst maintaining the boundaries needed for intimate sharing required for said influence, and the general vulnerability in the concrete WHAT I need to share: *stories about failure* and What We Learn From It All.
In short: Yes, I do journal a little bit. But me writing to myself is like Boomers talking about the weather at work: journaling is not *sharing*. Nobody is reading my journals, and I cannot, *absolutely cannot,* not even in the most delusional and grandeur-prone corner of my mind, pretend that someday, when I’m dead and famous, people will clamor over them and publish them and analyze them in eleventh-grade English class. Lol, fuck heavens, no.
If the purpose of my voice is influence, journaling is the equivalent of…
Look, Idk. I stopped writing there for a whole hour because I couldn’t think of an analogy that works. Which is telling; the premise is fucked – journaling has nothing to do with influence. Zero! My voice is *all about* sharing patterns and experience; the Laws of being alive.
Journaling is, to me, max self-indulgence. Journaling is romanticism. That said, though, who says a little self-romancing is that bad.
I do not write to feel or be seen – especially not when I’m becoming (or already am) little else than a product. I won’t tell you what Substack, the platform, is or isn’t in my opinion – that’s another thing my voice doesn’t do, haha. Making my writing into a product sums up what Substack feels like to me nicely, though.
Stats, everywhere the eye wanders. Actual, built-in social media; a thinly veiled Twitter-ersatz. All these growth-centric shenanigans. Live videos???
In a way, I need to thank Substack for making me aware of what I don’t want and can’t handle. I view this move of mine, this change, as just another step away from the trap of the homogenized dream of being a content machine committed to pleasing the algorithm.
Er, I mean, *financially independent content creator traveling the globe.* Freedom.
Whatever. Idk. IDK, OK? What matters is that *I personally* can no longer publish on Substack. (This could’ve been evident when I began using Google Docs as my primary editor a while ago, despite previously having expressed such fondness for the Substack editor when publishing there, haha.)
Okay, and not that it matters, and I don’t actually think anyone will try to argue (mostly because I’m quite sure not many people will read this anyway) but: YES, I know there are MANY good writers on Substack. I am *painfully* aware. They do very very good jobs, and I love reading them. And I have nothing, absolutely nothing against them doing what they do there.
I don’t have a vendetta against Substack, *I* just don’t feel at home there anymore. It’s too crowded and it plants a desire to be liked, to be seen – to want, in short – in me that isn’t there when I’m writing simply from The Abysmal into The Void. When anyone could be reading, or nobody. Schrödinger’s Reader.
This is perhaps a reason I never felt/feel truly at home on Platforms in general. Yes, maybe I’m shooting myself and my “message” in the foot by not participating (whatever that is; probably some combination of fuck everything and look at my stupid calendar) (which is, coincidentally, for the first time since the first time, not even close to finished as mistakenly promised in October and November and December. Yup. Who knows where this is all going)
