At the beginning of 2023, I decided to write every day, and to put whatever came of it onto a blog that I would not promote in any way. This arrangement seemed to me to meet some kind of integrity with the idea that I was indeed ‘shipping’ as the startup lingo has it, without participating in a collective performance that would only get in the way of being open with my (probably half-formed and unpolished) words. This plan was effective in its way. I wrote a number of things that were exploratory, though also strange in their lack of recipient- perhaps language can be useful just for one’s own understanding, but only an understanding that escapes the body.
Over time, I started to drift, and post less frequently. The unfinishedness seemed odd or even risky to publish, with the trope of the internet’s indiscriminate memory in mind. And also, I feel myself, when writing to noone, becoming more likely to express myself in the form of college essay or with a touch of what you might call “archness.” I’m more interested in a constant breaking apart or disintegration that sometimes a post can’t contain.
Then I decided, for no good reason that I can think of, to begin putting the posts on Substack. It has been an experiment that brings in a kind of cognitive dissonance- can I continue writing in an undefended way when I am also presumably sending the words, or giving a VC-driven company the task of sending my words, to other people? And is it then my job to manage the ways that such a platform would like me to work for them, showing me analytics and sending me various prompts to continue my investment in their ecosystem (one that I then, for consistency’s sake, invested in to the tune of a one-year’s subscription in another newsletter (consistency’s sake being my least favourite cause in general))?
Well, I don’t know. I certainly felt uncomfortable sending out these little posts, which I’m sure a coach would cite as a growth edge of some kind- bumping into my pattern of feeling like a burden if I am not feeling unimportant. But am I really attached to those kinds of narratives anymore? They seem like this weird way of conditioning myself to be productive in service of something invisible but smelly, to think “of course, if I were seen / had a platform / gained legitimacy” then I would be more likely to get what I want or avoid harsh judgement. While that’s obviously the opposite of true, maybe I could think, “‘my authentic self’ can emerge when I don’t censor myself.” There is a stage that I am meant to be on, and that stage’s performance somehow proves my realness, or at least, my worth and power.
There are so many layers here, because even in that inquiry there are judgements that I think limit my understanding. What could it be like to write or not write, to post or not post, with both the intent to connect and communicate (why else make things public or even epistolary?) and the indifference to being read or understood? Is this even logical in the first place? Part of what is so odd about the social media metaphor is simply that there are few historical examples of social contexts that combine communication and attention-seeking with such intensity and ubiquity, along with trying to negotiate the general lack of communication or attention most of the attention-seeking efforts inspire. In a way, posts on social media are advertisements of our loneliness. What makes an unread newsletter any different?
I have a kind of guilty nostalgia for the semi-private experience of LiveJournal, back before we understood the implications of putting one’s most embarrassing experiences on a platform soon to be purchased by unknown Russians. While I have generally begun to have less interest in text-based media as mediators of communication, LiveJournal was a place for the kind of reflection that journaling offers, while being also hilarious and at least for me, an impetus to take my own problems way less seriously, because it was more entertaining to note my own stupidity. There’s probably some layers of avoidance baked in to that as well- more of a spiritual bypass than an actual loving of my own feckless humanity, but these things are not binary.
I come back to a kind of presence and present when I remember that a sense of purpose has been revealed to me, that I don’t really matter so much– or rather, that the construction of me doesn’t matter, though I matter fully and equally to any other thing, being, or human.
Does writing support this purpose? I think so. Does a newsletter support the purpose? I really don’t know. My sense is that I’m much better at asking good questions than having answers. If going down inquiry road with me leads other people to connect more with the underlying idea that freedom, responsibility, and belonging are the same thing, maybe? I’m unsure that reaching this conclusion can come from anything other than practice. But perhaps for some reason there’s value in sharing my practice with you (because there must be a you, as the tree falling would agree). There’s no more that that, is there? Just the intention of love that can somehow be alchemically infused into the electrons moving and also not moving, the virtual that is also what is.