I’m addicted to Notes
A commentary on my recent comments
This is a warning:
I wrote this entire piece in little pieces, little snippets of time in between my activities. I then cobbled it together frantically. This is a pre-apology for the disorganization you are about to read.
If you are writer on Substack, the more applicable discussion is in the second part. I worked to keep the first part relevant for non-Stackers, as that is the majority of my audience. It’s a small readership, but I can’t help caring about every pair of eyes that wanders here.
I didn’t feel all warm and fuzzy writing this. My stomach stayed queasy as I edited. That feeling still lingers. Feelings of malcontent seem to be indications of addiction. What follows is sobering, but it does have a happy ending.
Part 1: My addictions
If you don’t know what Notes is, it’s basically Twitter on a different platform called Substack, which is where I post all of these newsletters to. Writers who use Substack are incentivized to use Notes to grow their following. Some are on Notes conversing with each other about the joys and pains of writing, and about life in general, because life for a writer is well… all about writing, and their writing is all about life. Others are posting funny nonsensical stuff without any desire to push readership to anywhere. A very slim few, from what I can tell, are calculating and premeditated predators solely trying to make a buck. There are probably others still that I haven’t encountered, and likely some fit into multiple of the descriptions above.
I like Notes, like I like drugs. I have been sober for over 7 years now—from mind altering substances (a vague description at best; alcohol made the list but caffeine and nicotine didn’t). I’m not supposed to advertise that, per the culty rules of a group who saved my life. I probably owe them that one simple thing. I do owe them much more than that.
I don’t advertise my sobriety, but it’s not a secret. When people notice, I tell them in a non-hesitant, shameless way; a way that is borderline pride. But that’s another thing I’m not supposed to do—be proud of it. I didn’t do it. It happened to me. It’s miraculous. There isn’t even someone to thank, not even me.
It has become impossible to tell if my newsletter is advertisement of Lee. It’s by me but I can’t tell if it’s for Lee. I don’t know who it’s for. I don’t know because I’m me, and most of what spawns here is self induced. By nature of its creation, it is self absorbed. I don’t know what to do with that information, or any of the stats that Substack provides, so I just write the things which torture the mind, one that is now rarely quiet, and waits for me between moments. That force compelled me to put the thoughts somewhere; right now they go here. Feeling a force such as this tug on all my actions feels like invisible puppeteering, and is likely why it’s hard for me to believe that my ideas are mine.
I think my favorite description of sobriety is, “raw dogging life.” I didn’t come up with that description.
The rauchy metaphor is accurate, if you were wondering. It’s accurate in the risk of the activity, the defenselessness, and the pleasure-thrill. The risk of a sober suicide is as dangerous as the drugs we take to relieve those compulsions. Every person in recovery knows someone who has taken their own life. If they don’t, they haven’t been around long enough, but they still know, because the stories are plentiful.
Staying sober is an impossible decision, there is no rationale that saves an addict. Not taking drugs is a mythical concept. Most people (maybe all?) are deathly terrified of sobriety, especially initially, only to notice others enamored by the potential pleasure and thrill, and be properly mind fucked about it all.
It appears as deception to say that sobriety is more thrilling and pleasurable than drugs. Many people would disagree with you if you tried to convince them. But just like drugs, if you’re not doing it right, you’re not going to get the high.
My life’s work is modulating that high, and aiming my propensity for obsessiveness towards lifestyles that don’t destroy mine, or other people’s lives. I don’t consider myself successful at this, all I’ve seemed to do is trade addictions on my journey—coffee, sugar, diets, exercise, work, cigars—sometimes spirituality. The worst of them has been powerlessly choosing particular people to worship, an activity that bewilders while it destroys.
My difficulties with social media have always been whispered hints from my previous life, a distant kind of familiarity. You know it’s a problem when you know it’s bad, but you do it anyways. We all have addictions, label or not. I have many, so that sober label has always felt tenuous.
I started the writing journey by committing to write one blog per day for a year. Actually, it started earlier than that. Yes there was a girl, she’s gone now. I learned recently that writers typically have a muse. I didn’t know that was a thing until I had already attempted to write a book, a book that I was convinced was inspired by her. I didn’t have any inclination to publish anything while we were together. When we parted, I didn’t know what to do with all of it. Much of my writing stems from the experiences surrounding that time. I no longer believe in coincidence, as that time held many other connections that catapulted my consciousness into new dimensions. This all coincided with early sobriety.
Those years I did a lot of writing that I’ll never share. If you read any of it, there would be no question of my insanity. I’m a refined lunatic now, with a vocabulary that can hide it—kinda.
I hadn’t decided if I was going to publish my first work, muse inspired, which included nearly 40,000 words of philosophy and personal stories, all jumbled into a form of writing even I didn’t understand. I was beginning to expand the work by decoding it. Most days I couldn’t even unravel one word. It was so dense and fractal, but real, like a waking dream.
I had to stop. I didn’t know if it was worth decoding. I enjoyed writing it, but the only reason to edit was to share it.
I decided I would start a blog, which is intertwined with another love story that we don’t have time for today. I only made it 180 days of the year long daily blogging goal, but that meant I had thousands of words published. Nobody was reading them, but that wasn’t the point. At some point I became proud of my ability. At that same point, I found Substack. This is that story.
Part 2: For the Stack
I am equal parts grateful and disgusted that my thoughts are finding a home. It is a relief to have a place that they can go with no pressure of being refined. It saddens me that they are drifting potentially into nowhere in Notes and now have no home in my dedicated works.
My Notes are orphan thoughts. I feel like a thought trafficker.
Knowing that pressing one of those hearty or bubbly or recycley buttons means I’m dealing dopamine to its creator makes it feel even more despicable.
I unintentionally repressed the feeling that I am a charlatan on this platform. But that repression was necessary for me to feel the freedom to be me in the space.
I didn’t have any following whatsoever. It amounted to 2 followers on Notes, and zero of my subscribers used the application. I wasn’t posting. I received all the advertising that my publication would get more exposure there. I wanted to be found at this point, since I finally believed that my words were worth reading. It took a lot of effort to get there.
I hate marketing, but I began to sacrifice other life areas to maximize my reach. I posted to Instagram, original content that I genuinely thought was interesting, but the only response was an old fling messaging my best friend asking if I was bipolar. My mother worried about me often during this period, not that that’s uncommon, but it was a new type of worry.
I didn’t need more reasons to exit that space.
Careful developing skills you don’t enjoy, you may wake up one day and hate your life.
Art is what an artist sees, not what is actually there.
What I decided to do, on a whim, was make it silly. Below is my most liked Note, it speaks to my process. Mind you it is not my best note, just the one people liked most. The algorithm doesn’t know me, or who most clicks me, yet.
More truth is revealed in jokes than any of us realize.
I needed to be silly, and funny, and not take it seriously. I knew people wouldn't respond well to my darkness, and I knew I shouldn't be promoting the evil that lives inside my skull. I needed a place where my darkness wouldn't infect everything.
At the end of the first week, I downloaded the app on my phone, which had previously been a distraction free zone. I had recently deleted all my medias so I could avoid the tempting blips and dings that assault my perception. By the second week I had more Notes than I could post. I was flooding my stream. I started adding them to any note taking apparatus available, with plans to eventually post them. I didn’t know why I wanted to post them, or keep them, or what value they were at all. But the thoughts kept urging me to scribble them somewhere.
I became so obsessed that I checked the app reflexively. I began tapping the bell icon without it even prompting me, an activity that I didn’t even consider a part of reality just two weeks prior. I was a sick lab rat hitting a button that wouldn’t even give me the high that I wanted. Every time I hit that button I was zapped, but I did it anyways.
Then, after only having having the mobile app for a week (or less?) I had to delete it. This may have been the fastest I’ve ever cycled through a mobile application.
I liked my old life, the one without the notifications and accompanying pressures to support them.
I liked my little Substack following, of which includes only people I have met in person, and one Stacker who somehow found me without having participated in Notes. I posted once a week (sometimes more), things that I thought were cool, but most of my friends didn’t express much interest. A few of them read it anyways. A few of those few told me that I was a good writer, and that I should keep going. I deeply appreciate that my friends tolerate my crazy. Hell… they even support it now.
I still would look at the stats on my computer, and wonder if I was making a measurable affect by posting different styles, or different times, or different frequencies. No method seemed to make that difference. It bothered me, because I thought what I was writing was awesome, but there was really nothing to be done about it. I wrote more anyways, and developed more writing projects. It still is a fun little game we’re all playing here, even if the game isn’t providing enough useful feedback.
At the moment I’m staying in an apartment complex that I’m employed to maintain. I swing hammers and turn screwdrivers and use other sorts of vert vert tools to combat entropy. In between verts I come up with new writing ideas, ideas that now all funnel to Notes.
It’s a nice apartment at the foot of a spectacular mountain in Breckenridge, Colorado. I have a view of the still snowy mountain from the balcony. Snow has a quality of stillness about it, despite its so apparent transient lifespan. Because that view is so spectacular, I decided to hide the TVs that are so obviously decorating the rooms, as central things, even in the bedroom, where I should be sleeping instead of consuming entertainment. When I walk in, it’s too easy to be reminded of an easy dopamine hit if it’s a central part of your vision. I’d rather be watching the mountain change seasons anyways.
Really I’d rather be writing, but my novel has slowed because of my obsession with Notes; and that bugs me. For some reason I need many differing tasks of ascending difficulty so that when I really don't want to do the hard thing I end up doing a slightly less hard thing that I don't want to to, like when you avoid writing to clean the kitchen, and the whole house, and do your laundry, and scuttle under the furniture for dust bunnies that you really have never cared about ever.
I’m avoiding work right now to finish this newsletter so I can release my consciousness from the burden of ideating.
This is my writing nook for the time being. It's an empty wardrobe. I sit on pillows on the floor, which I prefer. It's really an optimal space, as I can close the doors and walk away from my thoughts. It is more organized than my thoughts, but less than I want them to be. I write more notes now than ever, because I’m writing them to post to Notes. Made sense to write them on post-it notes. There’s actually far more notes lying about that I had planned on posting, but they didn’t have that sticky part, so they are just floating around somewhere, like my thoughts usually are.
The following is a compilation of the notes that didn't make it to the Notes app or my walls. Similar to how my Notes-posts has become, everything written between the bars is raw consciousness. Some of the rawness trickled outside of the dividers. Like I said, this whole post was written as stray thoughts.
Ride the emotional tides, the right words live in their depths.
Am I the only one that’s annoyed that I have to call country folk because pop took over another genre?
Forever is a promise you can’t keep. Do it anyways.
The more people there are, the harder it is to distinguish one’s self. It was more significant to be recognized when there were less humans and a lacking ability to spread ideas. I think this is a pre-built humility system. When the system has reached saturation, we’re all kinda equal.
Often I’ll read something I wrote in passing and wonder: where the fuck did that come from? Cause it wasn’t from me. I have a bad attitude. This guy sounds like he cares about people.
These algorithms are learning us, they are tracking our every shared thought, and practicing their own game: predict what human #7637821800 will like next.
It’s astounding that we’ve taught AI how to human, but we've neglected to teach ourselves. Or possibly that we have been practicing the wrong skills, and our ability to connect with each other has atrophied.
The strange principle difference I see between a Substacks and say, an Instagrams is that most (if not all) people who joined an Instagrams (in the beginning times), did it out of ignorance: I’ll just share my pictures. Because Substack came out after this had been overtly and excessively exploited, we are now left with the lingering guilt that we may be posting here solely for recognition. Substack is also more shamelessly up front about the business aspects of the application. I think I actually like that, but I still don’t trust Substack. For some reason I trust the users. It does feel like a safer space. I wish I knew why.
The users of Substack may seem like a different crowd, but likely it is a similar subset of humanity who has simply found a different avenue for their expression. There are subtle differences in the platform, but at its core it is the same as any social media, and that inspires the ickyness that many feel when participating in a game they know is sacrificial. Because this subset of people are naturally introspective, it’s not surprising that there is sweeping discontent with the corruption of perspective that is unavoidable in abstracted social settings.
It’s delicate to balance practicing a skill with the potential that you are infecting other minds.
Sales tactics state that the more touches you get, the more likely a customer is to buy your product. I don’t like the idea that I’m touching you, or that I need to touch you—A LOT—for you to pay attention to me. That thought pattern makes me feel like a thought prostitute, or some worse version, like a thought offender or something. I’d rather be a prostitute, I believe it’s a valid profession. People got needs, ya know?
I read enough marketing books to make me dangerous, but not to make me effective. That’s probably a good thing, for now. At least I’m not dangerous and effective. I also receive marketing newsletters, who keep telling me I need a marketing newsletter. My newsletter is my life as much as my life is my newsletter nowadays. Thinking that I’ve done it just to add to the density of people marketing themselves is a scary notion. If we all were marketing ourselves, to each other, it would feel like those marketing newsletters, who are marketing marketing to up and coming marketers. A cascade of subsumption. I’m not interested in climbing that hierarchy. The guys at the top don’t seem to be having fun, and now appear to have absorbed the concept of transactional authenticity. The longer this continues, and the more effective it becomes, the closer we get to a black hole of promotion, where all of our joys and ideas fall into the pit of despair.
Before I started using Notes I wrote a couple emails to my “favorite” writers on Substack. I realized during a conversation with one of my “followers” that my favorites aren’t really that, but they are idols of a way I wish I could write. This “favorite” idol had a style that captured my attention to the point that I had stalked him to his previous publication, which was far better than his Substack. His Substack did get more engagement though. I wrote him an email:
You don't know me and you probably never will. I found your thoughts as words on the internet which is two levels too abstract for me to believe half of what you say. Maybe it's three, or four, now that I'm also thinking and writing about your thoughts. At least it seems like you are having fun. I'm not a reader and I'm hardly a writer, though I pretend to do both and a lot of people (percentage not volume) think I'm smart and capable. It's easy to pretend nowadays, or most of us suck—hopelessly suck.
I'm really just an idiot with a thesaurus and an internet connection. Yay! We've set such a low bar.
I don't know why I feel compelled to write to you besides that same feeling that compels me to write things I probably shouldn't. I don't pay for your substack because frankly I don't care to ponder if it's worth my time to ponder its worth. You can stop reading and go back to your life if that sentence offends you, but I have a feeling you don't care either. I would have lazily hit a button to "support" you, but you unregenerately disabled those things. Glad you've ascended, is it lonely up there?
Here's a little heart. Don't read into it, I don't really like you. ❤🖕
If I were to guess, what prompted me to write this is some sense that despite your aloof satire I feel a heart still beating behind your cold words, if just out of spite for existence placing you here. Also, I'm new to having internet friends. There are few real humans who are willing to pick up pens anymore, so I write with sticky keys instead. Computers have too many shortcuts but oh well, here we are. Imbuing horny primates with repressed self awareness was a doomed experiment anyways. I don't much blame everyone for being terrible, I'm lazy too. When you can get a tingle at the tip of your dick with the swipe of a finger it doesn't make sense to dig around for stamps, or friends.
I guess I'm stuck using my fingers for something else since those shallow repetitive sensations are overrated and originality died with the typewriter. I'll keep them occupied with or without you, but I'd probably feel something if you decided to write back; something like friendship, just more pathetic.
Thanks for further devaluing your already trifled attention by reading this,
Lee
I thought it was funny. A pathetic kind of funny. But that’s where my humor originates, the same place my pathetic humanity does. He didn’t respond. I wasn’t expecting him to.
I do often have the expectation that people will engage with my newsletter, and fanatically check my own Substack for views or likes or comments, or now little notifications from Notes.
I imagine there is a lot of selfishness on Notes, just as there is anywhere. It’s strange to me that sharing has become selfish. We humans really have a knack for ruining things, and making amazing things, to then ruin them. I didn’t write this to ruin Notes or Substack, or any activity you enjoy. I genuinely like Notes and Substack, probably too much.
If you found this because of Notes, and my overtouchy web of thoughts, welcome. I don’t despise you, or that you found me that way. I don’t despise Notes either. I'm enamored with Substack because of the disparate perspectives that I have access to here. It still feels worth it—despite my obsession—to participate, because the few people whom I’ve already found (in a measly two weeks) are astounding artists, far better than I can hope to be; not because I suck or they are more skilled, but because they are so unfettered by promotion. And the best part is they don’t know how amazing they are, so their gooey beauty seeps out into the insecure corners of my feed. I can’t help dig for that hidden genius.
I’m addicted to the inspiration that is found in the shadows of Substack giants.
That addiction makes me frustrated that I get so hopelessly consumed with distractions. I have theories about the utility of our distracted nature, but I have to save that thought for another article. This one has branched too… distractedly.
I want my focus back.
I want to finish my fiction writing, even if it is Sisyphean task.
Notes is my new boulder.
I’m getting tired of finding the difficulty in all things.
I cannot be saved from myself.
It annoys me that I already feel like I need a detox from Notes. I’m disappointed in my inability to participate in social media in a healthy way. Even if this is the closest thing to a healthy high on the internet, it still compulsion, and I’m still debilitated by it.
The debilitation is that I wanted this addiction. I wanted to be consumed so much with my writing that I practiced constantly, interacted with other writers, learned from them, gathered and spread inspiration, experienced that world; and enjoyed all of it.
All of what I wanted happened on Notes, it IS a useful tool. There’s a web of connection that is inevitable when you participate. But webs are sticky, and make me feel like I’m gonna get all wrapped up and drained for my worth. Posting doesn’t necessarily mean that you will get more followers, likes, comments, or subs. It doesn’t mean you will get more friends. The creators of Notes like to leverage that idea, and the users have agreed. I haven’t been on it long enough to tell you it IS or ISN’T the THING to do. But I can tell you it’s not the aim. Adding subscribers and views and followers did nothing to me as numbers. The amount of likes told me nothing, but I liked it.
Alas, I would know none of this if I didn’t indulge. As is true for all human exploration, you don’t know if you don’t go.
During this exploration, I changed in the act, not from the result, and some of my best ideas have blossomed during the interaction.
I pray for you the strength to share without attachment.
Omg for whatever reason but the visual of the post it notes are so satisfying 🤩