I really agree with the point you raised in number six. I was listening to someone talk about the same sort of idea recently on a podcast and I found myself nodding along. It’s like because we don’t want to commit to because we want to keep our options open we actually cut ourselves off from fully experiencing any option. Funny that. :)
It means a lot to see someone read something I wrote, reflect on it, and write a response. This apparently simple interaction is actually so damn rare, at least for me.
When I joined Substack over a year ago, the idea of connecting with other writers, inspiring them, getting inspired, and establishing a dialogue sounded both exciting and distant.
I always thought of writing as this solitary activity that I loved but also found slightly isolating. All those mornings I'd stay home to write, I felt like I was missing out on actual life by being immersed in the blank page. I often got frustrated because my writing wasn't good enough and because I felt I was giving up my time just to produce mediocre art—to the point that I stopped writing for a few years.
Then I discovered Substack, and it felt like a nice way to come back to it. Slowly, post by post. I wasn't expected to write a novel that would become a contemporary classic. I could just ramble. Through writing I could find answers or, if not, at least learn how to ask better questions.
And then it started to happen—this exchange of ideas—not only in the digital world through posts like yours, but also in the physical one. The nature of my job—I work in a hostel—has allowed me to meet people from all around the world and get little snippets of their lives. Some of them have shared their art with me, and I've done the same, exchanging feedback and building conversations.
Experiences like these have given me a new wave of motivation. Exchanging ideas with others is so damn exciting. It's all about evoking something in another person and putting yourself out there. Being the kid with the stick, haha.
I really appreciate what you bring to the conversation: your embrace of commitment and your understanding of the many shades of novelty. Those ideas keep coming back to me over and over again, and I love your direct way of writing about them.
I definitely need more time for some of the ideas in your post to mature in my mind because there are so many of them. But I'm sure they'll give rise to new ideas of my own, feeding the cycle of the creative process.
Give and take. Like a wonderful game of tennis. Like life itself.
Yes. I’ve been writing online in one form and another since 2011 and I definitely want to preserve that spirit of blogging which was so common in that era. Back then it was pretty common to respond to other bloggers and writing was not so hermetic as it is these days on Substack. I live in hope that that spirit of pre-social media internet will return in one way or another. I’m not a fan of social media because every algorithm forces us to post every day if we want to have reach. It doesn’t behave as a tool but as something that controls our behavior. I think taking a break from it from time to time is very healthy, but of course the algorithm designers punish us for that, since they are not interested in our health but only in their bottom line. However, I will never stop considering the internet a magical gift that can be used for so much more than what the couple of walled gardens that take the most of our attention want us to believe. Our writing can definitely feel solitary and like we are shouting into the void. But it doesn’t have to be like that. We have an option to change it. We have much more influence on it than we think. Writing this post was a lot of fun for me, thank you for writing your piece. It’s a breeze of fresh air.
I really agree with the point you raised in number six. I was listening to someone talk about the same sort of idea recently on a podcast and I found myself nodding along. It’s like because we don’t want to commit to because we want to keep our options open we actually cut ourselves off from fully experiencing any option. Funny that. :)
Yes, we are all very attracted to the weightless. Thanks for reading, Michael.
It means a lot to see someone read something I wrote, reflect on it, and write a response. This apparently simple interaction is actually so damn rare, at least for me.
When I joined Substack over a year ago, the idea of connecting with other writers, inspiring them, getting inspired, and establishing a dialogue sounded both exciting and distant.
I always thought of writing as this solitary activity that I loved but also found slightly isolating. All those mornings I'd stay home to write, I felt like I was missing out on actual life by being immersed in the blank page. I often got frustrated because my writing wasn't good enough and because I felt I was giving up my time just to produce mediocre art—to the point that I stopped writing for a few years.
Then I discovered Substack, and it felt like a nice way to come back to it. Slowly, post by post. I wasn't expected to write a novel that would become a contemporary classic. I could just ramble. Through writing I could find answers or, if not, at least learn how to ask better questions.
And then it started to happen—this exchange of ideas—not only in the digital world through posts like yours, but also in the physical one. The nature of my job—I work in a hostel—has allowed me to meet people from all around the world and get little snippets of their lives. Some of them have shared their art with me, and I've done the same, exchanging feedback and building conversations.
Experiences like these have given me a new wave of motivation. Exchanging ideas with others is so damn exciting. It's all about evoking something in another person and putting yourself out there. Being the kid with the stick, haha.
I really appreciate what you bring to the conversation: your embrace of commitment and your understanding of the many shades of novelty. Those ideas keep coming back to me over and over again, and I love your direct way of writing about them.
I definitely need more time for some of the ideas in your post to mature in my mind because there are so many of them. But I'm sure they'll give rise to new ideas of my own, feeding the cycle of the creative process.
Give and take. Like a wonderful game of tennis. Like life itself.
Yes. I’ve been writing online in one form and another since 2011 and I definitely want to preserve that spirit of blogging which was so common in that era. Back then it was pretty common to respond to other bloggers and writing was not so hermetic as it is these days on Substack. I live in hope that that spirit of pre-social media internet will return in one way or another. I’m not a fan of social media because every algorithm forces us to post every day if we want to have reach. It doesn’t behave as a tool but as something that controls our behavior. I think taking a break from it from time to time is very healthy, but of course the algorithm designers punish us for that, since they are not interested in our health but only in their bottom line. However, I will never stop considering the internet a magical gift that can be used for so much more than what the couple of walled gardens that take the most of our attention want us to believe. Our writing can definitely feel solitary and like we are shouting into the void. But it doesn’t have to be like that. We have an option to change it. We have much more influence on it than we think. Writing this post was a lot of fun for me, thank you for writing your piece. It’s a breeze of fresh air.