Words! What? Oh: no, wait... where?

How to survive Substacking-ish unsuccesfully for a year: Post 2

A few nights ago I sat at my little travel laptop, an ipad and folding keyboard, and began typing something I didn't know would turn into a post. My brain disappeared and I became the screen and the keys and sometimes noticed my fingers clacking away. When I woke from the trance, it was 4.5am, and 4.5k words had been typed. I couldn't help noticing: is that a coincidence? I tend to tell people that I don't believe in coincidence, and look for all the little signs of synchronicity everywhere as proof that everything is imbued with divine timing. It's like a life game I play with everything, and it feels good. I don't know if it means anything, or is applicable, but the act is gratifying, so I keep doing it.

I kinda realized what I wrote last was "too much" for an effective blog post. I placed the best stuff at the end, which is not a good way to popularize yourself. Most people can't handle more than 6 minutes on a post, and that one would require at least 20 to get to the best bit. That means, of the small few who read my stuff, and even tinier % of people got the most out of what I shared. I understand all of that: how long to type, where to put the SUBSCRIBE HERE buttons, the ways to keep someone engaged, and how to tie a post together to make you feel warm and fuzzy and want to support me. I even know where and how many and what should sit on the other side of a bullet point. I hate that I know that stuff, so I ignore it, and just do whatever the fuck is happening right now.

But also, I feel the train wreck of a morning when my post sits unread because I didn't utilize the tactics, and feel too deeply the dragging agony of only getting a couple views on pieces that I feel at my core are the best things I've created. It's rare nowadays to get no engagement, but back when I started it was every day, for months. I endured that for almost the entire year of this game we are playing. Some people endure longer, with more talent, so I'm not gonna propagate a sob story to compare to. Instead I aim to share gratitude with the special people I found during the exporation.

In a juicy contradiction, the only thing that brought me to those people was promoting my writing. And I hate that too. People talk about this shit—a lot—like it matters. Promotion is over-promoted. And I fall for it, despite my hateful rhetoric and pouting. Then my numbers increase and I feel worse. And I look around at all the words exhausted in the name of more words being regurgitated and I wonder... what the fuck are we all doing?

So in an effort to change the conversation, today's 101 lesson is my answer to:

Why are we here?

Words! What? Oh... no, wait... where?

How to survive Substacking-ish unsuccessfully for a year

I crafted post #1 being cryptic and alluding to loves which have captured my attention during this Substack experiment. That creates a lot of weird feelings for people, and doesn't give certain closure. I've found that people like to be spoon fed in newsletters, kinda like how old people read a newspaper or watch the news and think thats actually what’s happening in the world… lol. And that's ok, I like that. It's an avenue for a different method of expression. It's challenging for me, however, because I gravitate towards hiding meaning behind the structure, words, and associations. It's not an effort for me, it's easy to do that, but it may be that this kind of direct art form is less suited for someone like me. That could be the reason it weighs on me. I still practice things I'm not good at though, and try to make it fun. And again, the impetus of this post was in a way a basic goodbye, just in case I disappear. I don't like goodbyes in the sad this is the end way, but it’s important just in case. Like that one time my friend threw me a going away party because my airplane got all mangled up in an accident and I had to find new employment, so I thought I'd take a break from that and start this traveling writing thing. And another friend at the party said something like: “you don’t get a party if you are coming back.” I was planning on being gone for six months to a year. It's almost been three now. Life is funny that way.

But enough of my boring stories! It’s time for class! In this lesson, we will be practicing more direct association. If you want a review, here's an outline of our syllabus:

Post 1:

"The" process

Why I chose Substack

Who do I write for?

Post 2: you are here

Wordcounting

What inspires me?

Waiting for perfection

Where do I find the time?

Post 3:

How do I...

choose what to publish?

release content (icky word, uh oh!)?

decide on style?

Do word counts matter?

There's a lot of word count drama in the world of writing. How much per day, how much you've done. How much is needed? But really it's not about any of that. It's not even really about how much you keep or how much you publish. It's not about how much others read. It's about how much you've loved, how much you felt for the words and how much you can go back and say—YES—that was what I needed to write. And it sucks that the things we keep talking about are numbers and views and the rating of a book. And it sucks that art is always given a value. And it sucks that so much is lost to hate; self or else inflicted pain. And sometimes, most times, I wonder when I hit send or seal the letter if anything I'll ever do will be as special as I felt when I wrote it. Because I'm never sure if anyone understands it, really understands what it took. And I don't know if, or when, somebody convinced me that it didn't matter if someone sees what I felt, or what pains I endured shaping that thing into something worthy enough for my brutal psyche to share it. It matters that creators share the understanding that this task hurts, but it’s worth the hurt. And no matter how it spreads, it matters what the recipient felt. That them feeling something from seeing only the final form of something is just as special, or more. But that voice lingers at the tip of my pen, criticizing… was it enough?

During my unpopularity, I wrote quite a bit about writing. It was fun to write flowery stuff about the thing I was doing, like I was observing myself observe myself. If someday you become curious, these are my favorites:

I’m afraid of writing

Oppressive inspiration

Revision

It’s funny when I write like this because it might look like I’m trying to link stuff, but most of the time it’s just me turning off a desire to show any congruence, then things just flow together seamlessly. I chuckle watching it as if it’s someone else doing it, then get to read it again and again and wonder who I was in those moments.

I really don’t have to try at all to write prolifically when I’m in that mode, which is hilarious because I spend a lot of energy making sure I hit goals or work on the “correct” projects to further my growth as a writer. But I’ve never known what that definition even is. So I’m always reassessing what it would mean for me to be a success. Even after I’ve set a goal, I don’t really know what I want the end to look like.

I do always have to start, however, and that’s where wordcounts enter the conversation.

I started online writing by making comprehensible posts—committing to writing 500 words a day—keeping all the structure similar and within a topic that I would come up with before I started writing. Actually... it might have been 1,000 words per post, I don't really remember. That's what happened though, it started to not matter if I did 500 or 1,000, and at some point it grew to much more. There was a particular day where I gave up the wordcounting completely, and the filtration mechansms, and gave precisely 0.00 fucks about what I was saying. Something like 7,000 words came out. That day I transitioned from making an effort to come up with writing prompts and began living my life, allowing inspiration to find me.

What inspires me?

I have a sense that inspiration originates in desire. So I find it important to discover what I want.

I'm about to do a thing with this post that I learned from

Zoe

. She? I think she, I don't really know, made a silly mistake once with pronouns in a post about some big name Substacker and I quickly notified her to fix it and now we are Substack friends. She made a post like this that I can't find anymore because it looks like she deleted it. I admire that, those people who can just nuke their creations, atomize an effort that had been so painfully collected into something digestible into nothing, and not look back. I keep refreshing

Nella Brown

’s profile to find that everything she wrote has disappeared (like 10-20—or more!—posts!) and she's decided on 10 new page names to write about. And that's badass I think, just reinventing when inspiration hits. Side quest: Nella was the first Substack person to really find my old stuff and dig through it and decide that I'm worth reading, and I pretty much owe this current proliferation to her believing in me. So the rest of this post is gonna be a compilation of all the people that have inspired me on the journey to figuring out what I should be writing. If you hate it go attack Zoe and Nella please, I now have too many followers frienships to manage.

I hold onto a lot of my stuff, even the nonsense, just in case it can find itself into a post. You're reading one of those now, a collection post. The idea catacombs I call my writing is a mess, like a mad scientist’s lab with papers all over the place, but the dude with wild hair and disproportionate pupils and singed eyebrows can always find what he needs. And you learn to trust that dude, even though it seems like he has no clue what's goin on.

I sometimes sit down and write and entire post start to finish in a daze of caffeine and chocolate chips, and other times I write snippets of things that won't leave me alone while I live my life. Like

James Hart

once said about his muse bothering him during a zoom call and having to go find a pad and paper. That Notes post only got two likes, but I remembered it, and I think that's more important. There's something special about shadowy impact. There truly is no way to know how much you have changed someone, not even if they tell you.

I ask myself often which direction I should go. It is often a compilation of the daemon muse, something I learned from

Mike Speriosu

, and a tranquility I don’t have a name for, so we can just call her tranquility. It’s different than voices, it’s more like a cauldron of emotion that I can’t separate, so it stirs in me until I cool off from serving it as words.

There’s this thing called the full body yes. I ask my body a lot for guidance, cause it doesn’t feel like I can ask God. Sometimes he (she?) doesn’t answer intentionally, like not answering is an answer. But my body always has one, so sometimes when I need to make decisions I ask it, then pay attention to where the yes is coming from. I balance that in a fraction of a feeling and then do, or don’t, and try not to look back until something forces me to review where I made the error.

I don’t think about what to post anymore. Often I think I’ll stop posting, but then invariably reopen the app when I’m bored and get a dose of my favorite someone showing me phantom love, which I will most definitely misinterpret and allow my emotional reaction to hormonalize me into a ball of display. But then I’ll get disappointed even if they send, “wow this is great,” because I think my body wants them to hug me instead, and a screen wink is a bad substitute.

I don't let popularity games dictate what I post, but sometimes I ask about stuff, like when I asked everyone if I should share my writing with a real life muse of mine, and most people said yes, then it all backfired epically, but that post became my most popular post cause it was magnificent, and

Maia Brown-Jackson

consoled me about the whole thing with like an entire essay as I was melting from the emotions.

That kinda scares me about exposure, that one day I'm gonna care enough about what people want to hear and my writing will change. But I have to weigh that as the burden of being inspired, because that post, a compilation of loves I've accumulated, was stylistically inspired by

hailee nueske

, who I would have never learned from if I didn't allow some of other people's genius to seep into my writing.

I spent a lot of time in the dark to insure that I would only find my voice, and be unique forever!. I didn’t realize I perfectionism was holding me back. I’m real persistent when I’m being stubborn. That’s what happens when you only have echos of yourself.

Waiting for perfection

I've tried too many different methods for developing ideas to post. I've obsessed over pieces that never feel done. I've waited for the right times, and the much needed inspirations, and and and. I learned how to and from

sonja ringo

.

I don't write most of this stuff down. I have an anti-establishment mindset about the whole idea that you lose it if you don’t get it on paper. Most of what I make gets created during meditation or menial tasks, when I can’t write stuff down. I trust it's going to incubate and manifest at the right time. But I also recieve cumpulsory messages from that voice and it begs me to write when I’m in the middle of building a roof or something, like scary somethings that I really should be focusing on instead of ruminating on how shredded lettuce is a conspiracy. I hold onto the whispers and the idea surfaces later for me to write it down. So I don't really know how to discern all that besides following chaotic repetitive mumbling. If it keeps popping up, or won't go away, I know it's time to write something. I always know where to find it, whether it be in a hidden thought process, a sticky note, or a comment I made months ago.

What it taught me is that expression will let me know when it’s supposed to expose itself.

Strangely, much of my nexts come from editing my lasts. My conversations are never really finished. The future of my writing is always an extension of the creation that is editing.

Obviously, I have an unhealthy relationship with editing too...

I truly can't figure out if something is complete until I hit send, then feel the incompleteness of it. I spend the week following a submission of a piece nitpicking it's completion, edit regret, edit, regret. Hide with more creations that I don't send. I always continue writing while I’m mid-posting stuff, so ya… welcome to dynamic reading.

Every time someone hits like on one of my posts I feel obligated to go in and improve it, like I’m tidying up for a new guest after the last one is satisfied. I spend a lot of hours editing. It’s like the 80/20 rule (it takes 20% of the time to write 80% of the content, and 80% of the time to finish the last 20%) but less rule following and more just obsessing over every detail like a comma is gonna change my future.

I don’t even remember the things that help until after I’ve done them. Then I feel relieved and in that peace I forget until I’m miserable again. There’s a lot of mystery to the whole thing. Sometimes I read a section and just… hmmmm, it’s almost right. It is fine as it is, until I change it and find the relief.

I also reread my old writing a lot. I tell myself it’s because I need to remember who I was. It doesn’t feel like I’m ruminating on myself, though it does feel like an intellectual masturbation sometimes. Technically I’m mind fucking myself, but the stuff that gets written doesn’t feel like me, so when I read it a second or third time, every time it feels like it’s a different me gifting forward wisdom. I think stuff like: I’m redreaming new futures consciously, in a waking state, fully aware and documented. It feels responsible, even thought it might be me playing with other versions of me in a parasympathetic personality disorder kind of way.

What is clear in the question of—when is something done?—is that it is more important to ask if this feels complete, rather than rushing to finish it for finishing’s sake. That usually takes more time than I like, but the feeling of it being… right, is enough to keep me trusting that it’s worth spending the extra effort.

Where do I find the time?

I don't.

It seems like people make a schedule for their newsletter, but I could probably write all day forever and send something new, in the form of old ideas, every day. A little digest of how it feels to live with my head. I convinced myself you didn’t want that, that it was too much, and my excess drives people away. So my scheduling style is newsletter style once a week(ish) and poetry whenever always anytime, and my fictions keep growing, but only when I have working energy do I compile it for sharing. It's an energetic thing, and for me that's not a predicable thing. I have abundance sometimes, and am at a loss sometimes, and that's all ok. I spend some time browsing

Tara

’s energetic discussions for guidance on that, and once she tried to encourage me about my inability to organize my library of Notes, so naturally I vomitted my "system" on her and… ya… she kept talking to me after I unloaded my crazy on her so I appreciate that. I still owe her a manifesto that I'm working on, but this manifesto was more naggingly appropriate for the times, so here we are, manifestio-ing.

I'm writing this at 3:30am after working a more than full day maintaining a property for a friend. Hopefully it’ll be done before 4. It’s hot here, and I try to stay hydrated, but also I need coffee to stay pumping out the words. That’s a lot of hot liquid moving about. I am soon to leave, would like this place in good shape when I go, but also need to complete this goofy writing manifesto. I'm delirious. If this turns into a great piece of writing I'll be amazed, cause I doubt I'll remember these moments.

It's July 4th. I like that synchronicity. I feel more free as I get closer to the idea that Substack isn't for me. I imagined my way back in time to ponder why I started a newsletter. I'd be lying if I said I'm immune to marketing gurus attacking my mindset and pushing me to promote myself. But as I spent more time writing, I lost track of that motive. That's kinda funny, that a selfish motive can bring you to something more authentic and free. It would be unfair and incomplete to say that I joined Substack altruistically. It must be that I joined it to spread my work. Is that a "good" purpose? Who knows. But as I spent more time writing, I lost track of that motive. That's kinda funny, that a selfish motive can bring you to something more authentic and free.

Popularity is a strange concept, just like wealth. It seems like people think that becoming financially abundant will solve many of their problems. It seems like people who are financially abundant have access to popularity. They can choose to be, or not to be popular (mostly). Some people use popularity to access more opportunities, which in turn, increases earning potential. Some people, granted the right skillset and determination, skip popularity entirely. That makes me wonder... even if popularity is desirable because of the downstream benefits, could it be skipped? People skip it for money. And I know you can skip money for joy. So what do I really want? Cause I sure am losing a lot of sleep, time for activities, and mental clarity over this promoting my writing thing.

Back back in the olden months, like 60 days ago when I started making friends on notes, I started finding little known artists. Not to get them to subscribe, or restack, or care about what I write. That wouldn't make sense, cause the most effective thing to do is to get the big guys to notice you. I think I maybe tried that once and felt icky about it so I stopped and realized that I wanted to enjoy this more than I wanted people to like me, so found some little guys to talk to, cause I feel like one of those. I still have star emoji eyes for some people that I'm not gonna plug here because I'm not the type to outwardly promote being shameful sap for popularity. But anyways I found

You're Killin It

by Laura Perry during a time when I was really not doing that at all. I remember her name from one interaction we had, which is a BIG FUCKING DEAL for me. We were chatting about how people with real jobs find the time for this nonsense, and she said, and I'll remember this forever: "so you basically find it in the lint of your belly button." She was right, I don't know where the time for this comes from. I have to dig for it someplace that feels like it's inside of me, but really is a collection of old me's shoved into crevices that I forget about. I'll remember that because I stood up that morning to get ready for work and before I put on my shirt I looked down in a near-hallucination from that exhaustion we were just comiserating about and there it was, the lint, in my belly button.

I spent a lot of time those days in-between working and writing posts and pretending to progress towards a finished novel, interacting with various little guys, who soon grew bigger, and I wish I could list them all, but that seems a little too much. I do remember the first couple, like

Kert Lenseigne 🌱

who catapulted my poem about dust specks into the double digits of likes, a first time ever for me.

And

Oighrig (Ni/They)

found me and was so stoked about it, and I’ll remember that cause I don’t know why, but it was special even though I barely know how to spell their name... and can't figure out pronouns but they call themselves Ni. I don't get it but I respect it cause they seem pretty rad.

And I chat alot with

asa riah

about being seduced by doom and how there are too many drafts in this universe.

But to go back in time to when I decided to spend more time on the internet...

At the time I was in Italy, basically melting down from three interconnected heartbreaks I smooshed between different humans that had no idea I was spreading my feelings from all three into a hot, excessive cascade to the next one cause I couldn't get closure from the previous one. I ate my feelings from love #1, lost my shit on #2, then died on #3. I kinda stole that joke from

Micah Vigeant

, but I lived it before he said it so it's mine now. Eat, shit, die.

My mother had called me, a deep concern oozing from manipulative attempts to lure me home, a loving manipulation via concern. I’m too familiar with these attempts by now, and can see those motives from across the world, many many miles away. I also knew how to manage my expression at this point, and it was becoming a release. So when the full frontal me was broadcast to the 30 people who I had met along my travels, or known from previous ones, I wasn't all that embarrased when I got the immediate—are you oks?—from some people who know me.

That post is here.

I also managed to snag a video call with

Gurwinder

the same day, who at the time was my favorite Substack personality, and someone I had seen appear on podcasts with some otherworldly, but still grounded, insights on internet life. I was kinda writing blog posts to nobody, and watching some self improvement stuff at the time. Then he appeared and I was like... wait... what is this guy doing? I need some of that. It was cool, not just because I was talking to a literary idol of mine, but he basically co-signed the experiment I was on: taking an extended departure from routine and exploring Europe to write. I chatted with him at a colorful eco-Hostel at the foot of Mt. Vesuvious, which all sounds like an epic start to a trope memoir, but really it was meh besides getting tips from my favorite social media surgeon.

The posts I began to write during this time were bizarre but compelling, like I was carrying a pocket Pandora's box, but could leave behind the chaos of my raw expression as I moved from country to country. I had decided that I was going to descend into the internet, a place that I typically avoid to keep my sanity, to see if I could find a home for my writing. That's not really what happened, but I did begin to document the experience and explore styles based on my mood, the weather or stars, and whatever heartbreak was plaguing me at the time. I seem to like torture, or am magnet for heart throbbing stories, cause now I have a ton of them, most still living in the messy catacombs waiting for another day.

I spent those months practicing, preparing my abilities for an audience. When I returned home, and to work, I had a lot of work to do. I was below broke and beyond exhausted from living plane to plane out of a schoolboys backpack. Then home, I knew I needed to double my efforts to get this writing thing going if my creativity was going to survive.

I maintained an income, and a writing schedule, initiating new projects and continuing old ones. Then I went a little crazy, learned how to panic, and began questioning how much of this was really possible without completely losing my shit. All of this filtered into my writing: good material, tough lifestyle. I had fleeting glimpses of the freedom I remembered from the life I had just before starting this journey, a freedom that led me to want to share my experience through writing. It all has culminated into a laughable irony, one I aim to share in my next post.

Here is your teaser:

I don’t think the world recognizes some of the underlying reasons the male population doesn’t read as much, and has begun receeding from academia. I spend a lot of my life practicing utility, tearing muscles and cracking tendons to further the movement of machines. I am not debilitated as heavily as some of the men who hoist the underworkings of society on their backs, but I do know those men, and those men don’t have much time to read. They are tired. I can hear the screams of their decaying vertebrae when I finally lay down, at an hour too late to find rest, because I’ve been living a double life hoping that I could make the prison of labor and freedom of expression live in the same lifeform. They are tiring in different ways, like I shared with

Angèle

in a note about how I spend my physical energy making money, and my mental energy writing. I don’t think one is easier, but it is not sustainable to do both, and I think we forget those men (and some women) keeping our comforts alive so that others of us can explore mental fatigue in creation of new worlds. That’s synchronous, the whole construction of it, and although it’s easier for me to focus in the world I occupy psychologically, I think it’s important for us to widen our appreciation to the things that we most take for granted: the roads to move, and the lights to see, and the gas that heats our homes and cooks our meals. The people who keep those things alive so we can create aren’t as often noticed, and don’t have a voice in these realms to squeak when they need grease.

I don’t like identity politics, but I think it would be criminal not to acknowledge how women band together on this platform, while in comparison, one of my closest companions on this journey has been

Nur Nadar

, who instead of sending extra foo foo nonsense, sends reminders that we should fight each other soon. Nur and I have different approaches to reality, despite sharing the difficulties of manhood. He likes taking pictures of his pets, sending overhashed quotes, and plastering AI generated cuteness all over his posts. In comparison I chastise those same actions, leave my posts without buttons or pictures, and denounce the value of subscribership. It’s miraculous we are coexisting, because we are each other’s representatives of an opposite. But we are more than coexistent, I’d venture to say he’s one of my internet friends. I don’t read too much of his writing, but I am filled with joy when I see him succeeding. That’s how men bond: quietly whispering… yeah, you go dude, while yelling: “suck it, I’m winning!”

I approached this as a fun game, but it got out of hand. I still remember the post I made in the beginning , a little game inside the game, and

camden noir

was the only person to take me up on it: I said: “I’ll pay anyone $100 if they can find my only newsletter that was generated completely by an LLM (AI chat bot). Actually, there’s one sentence that was written by me, and that’s a HUGE clue.” He didn’t win. Womp for him. But that offer is still open if you want to play. I figured that if someone was bored it would be a fun, low hassle game because I only had like 50something posts and only 70% of them are newsletters, but they’d have to go into my archive to find any of it cause I really don’t want to pay people hundreds of dollars that I barely had. It wasn’t a ploy for more people to comb through my writing and eventually start liking me from sheer exposure. In my mind it was a cool game for myself: if many people played, and liked playing cause they liked my writing, I was probably gonna start losing some real money, real fast. It was a fair game. Fair games are more fun.

I’m not saying with any of this that Substack is an unfair game. I think it’s in development, and we are, in part, lab rats of that refinement. It’s important that we hold some integrity, especially when we become lottery winners with no comprehension of how it happened. I see a lot of those newsletters and posts about all the mystical ways you should buy into selling your newsletter. Frankly, y’all are full of shit if you think you know how this rocket flies. You are as full of shit as any Wall Street hedge fund. And if you believe market analysts know what they are talking about, you really haven’t spent any time at all paying attention to human popularity machines, which makes your expertise even less credible.

I don’t think these are invalid pursuits, mind you. I think those are fun games too, and some people win big, then occupy an accompanying emptiness that is the prize of overinflating an ego.

We cannot predict the future, but in many strange ways, writing is time travel. In my last post

rish

used precognition to say some words that were already being drafted in this post. That alone is, in the tiniest ways, proof that we are all connected in this effort. That alone is enough for me to want to continue playing: just to see how connected we are.

One of my difficulties, however, in this particular space, is the overwhelming voice of femininity. My masculine biology struggles to connect with the polarity that is that opposite.

As a man of inescapable myopia, it does feel like women are able to rally quick support for their writing on Substack with a you go girl attitude, or even with a my life sucks cause feminism trope, or sometimes just talking about what it’s like to have a vagina. And that’s vulgar, it feels like I’m not allowed to say any of that. But vulgar is an integral part of manhood. We need men. I suspect that I would be shoved into the incel labeled corner if I followed the path of whining about my gender and talking about penises. And there’s still people who will read this and say that I deserve to be silenced because men are too loud anyways. But, since I’m considering walking away from this thing, I feel free to say all of that. And pucker up bitches, my next one is gonna find some sore spots.

I will state, however, that I recently met (virtually)

Mel Barrozo

, a mother who has a published book (giving her more credibility than my ramblings), and has spent more time on Substack, with less of a following. So there isn’t a formulaic biological configuration that we can blame for any of this.

There isn’t a right way to do this thing. But most people are better at it than me. That’s a direct correlation to my real life, where most people I interact with grapple with confusion surrounding how I invite difficulty and live on less and less, promoting the altruism in evil concepts, the abundance in silence, and the brightest parts of life being found in dust-damp, but otherwise empty, windowless basements.

I have many skills, and could painfully waltz out of the writing world into a high paying tech job, effortlessly transition into an airline pilot career, or start a construction business and not need to learn much more than how to hire a couple immigrants to help me build an empire. I could leave all that behind and live a passionate life as an outdoor guide, a naturalist, or find a plot of land to survive on. I likely could live happily in a tent, or a monastery, or retire to a fishing village and blend into the third world if I wanted that. I believe in all this possibility, but can’t see myself succeeding as an artist. The world has proven that to me that I can't make it as an artist, though

Camille Dawnier

likes to remind me that I could probably change my mind into a more recognized life, that my talent is inescapable, that is is “breathing for me.” And she’s probably right, but of all the things I can imagine, I can’t imagine that. It is my only writers block, the one I need most to be rid of, or so it seems.

I think I often forget that many people have lived less intensity as me, and I probably have some wisdom to share from that. All the wisdom I have ever learned has pointed to one truth: I don’t know, and never will. This is a game of seeking, and sharing, and being embarrassed in ignorance, harnessing that and distilling it into humility, then looking at someone struggling with a soft humid understanding that you can’t save them, and their road is longer than they can walk, but you can be there to pick them up and walk together the last unbearable miles.

So I might give up this thing, but I'm gonna finish complete what I started. I'm gonna finish because of all these people that I will likely never meet, but I can still feel them picking me up again. In a couple days I'll release the “How” of all this, potentially my last newsletter post, and it's gonna be a sad goodbye, but it'll be a good one.