This site is yet another experiment in letting my words leave their place of origin so they will not rot within my being. To ensure they find their way out of me in the first place, I have found it amazing and free and wonderful since... JANUARY (time is crazy) to block off my entire computer till noon every day — with the notable exception of iA Writer.

Previously, Substack was the place to then bring them to pasture. Now, it’s no longer frequent-able even for ten minutes on the weekend. Spending any time there (its dashboard makes it impossible to ignore the siren song of the Home Feed) immediately calls to my brain the amazingness of some writers (and here, and everywhere), rendering me distraught and mute and incapable. This is a pattern that has existed since childhood and across all creative pursuits. Faced with the existence of other people doing what I do, no matter how much I may love their work, how it inspires me, I shrink, my throat closes up, I begin to harbor hate towards the medium and all the ways I can identify my own ways of using it being somewhat similar to the ways The Others do.

Substack to my writing brain is like 18-year-old whiskey to an alcoholic. It doesn’t work. Even a sip derails me. I wish it was different, but paradoxically, the warmth and sincerity I tend to come across there is what makes me require keeping my distance. It’s like my system simply refuses to create in the presence of others — the more like-minded, the less it is able to carve out room for itself to be itself instead of focusing its attention purely outward. I can’t be in “common areas” with the intention to contribute, only take in. But when I take in too much, creation becomes impossible and I need to create space in my system again. The voices need to quiet down, I need to be able to hear myself, inside, and the ambient noises outside.

It’s been a year, maybe even more, since I first started playing with the thought of leaving the writing-people-trying-to-enter-the-creative-economy commons room entirely — that is, retracting my awareness from it. I thought I needed to stay, just for the Knowing that some people are actually reading what I need to let go of, but I think I was wrong: I feel most free in my writing when I am not aware of who’s watching, or not. This (this, here) is the way.

Last revised May 26, 2026.