No. 07 Some Musings This Time
A little more writing than usual
Hello dear reader, I’ve found myself wondering what to do with this newsletter. There are a few of you on the other end and I feel so grateful to have you there! What a blessing! What luck! But alas, I am myself and have appeared to have become overwhelmed by the eyeballs, and pushed myself into avoidance of making this newsletter a thing! What a classic paradox of the internet, as soon as there is an audience, the permanence, reach, etc. becomes overwhelming and makes it harder to make. I guess this is something I’ve been struggling with the past 10 years. But who hasn’t?
I’ve realized recently that responsibility tripping up my desire to create extends to… well any other creative endevears in my life. Recovering my sofa cushions? Yes please! Crochet all day when I don’t have anywhere to put or sell these things I’m making? SURE. But once there’s responsibility attached to a thing I would otherwise want to be doing, I’m kicking and screaming into the void in protest.
So what do I do in those moments? I shop. I browse. I look to things outside of myself, hoping to speak to myself through things instead of words like a well adjusted introspective person. If I get these boots, I’ll be classy and chic like that influencer with an adorable family and house. None of this is knew, I’d wager all of you reading this know how fucked late-capitalism is, how fucked it is that we define ourselves by our things. But, there’s something valuable in calling it out when you get lost in it, no?
I wrote the above paragraphs a few weeks ago now. I can happily report that labeling my avoidance and talking about it has freed me up to get shit done. Therapy does work! Just in time for the world to feel like it’s ending, again. I am at a loss for words for the precipice that our world stands at. It feels insurmountable. Returning to these words have helped ground me back into myself and what I can do here and now. I hope you find a way to do the same for yourself these days.
I’ll leave you with one bit of ephemera from my journeys through the internet. I have a habit of screenshotting things I like, and leaving them unlabeled and unorganized, piling them into a folder and leaving them there to be discovered the next time I decide to organize. I screenshotted this one on January 15, 2021 and only just now found and googled. I believe it’s from something from the 18th or 19th century, as the “f” is actually a “long s”.
Mes sanglots means my sobs. How emo of me.
