Category: LifeCategory: Life

Inspired by Lindsey Adler’s recent Note, I decided that on Monday’s Escape Pod Zoom call we’d go around the room and each of us would read aloud for one minute.

Someone read their first Substack post. Someone else read old journal entries their daughter wrote at age nine. An inspirational quote and a paragraph from “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rilke. Excerpts from “Hysterical Blindness and other Southern Tragedies that Have Plagued My Life Thus Far” by Leslie Jordan. A paragraph from the Combahee River Collective Statement.

I read dialogue between two civilians signing up to run a cantina from “Death Star.”

Over the last several months, we’ve built enough connection that this activity didn’t break us. No one logged off.

And while I’m pretty sure this didn’t help anyone “quit instagram,” this was a small act of performance. This was curation. This was taking and giving of ourselves.

And the mere act of sitting there and listening to a person read? This wasn’t a YouTube video or podcast, but a Monday morning group of misfits simply reading to one another.

Not everything needs to be useful, but all of this has purpose.

Life should inform the writing on your website, your newsletter, your creative output.

This from Lyly Dhommar, from a recent Email Guidance exchange.

Uncle Seth aka Lord of Social media escape club, confirmed that yes, connections and actions in the real world are the way I should live now. Then, I’ll write about them if something happens, not the other way around.

Do all the things. Go to the shows. The art openings. The ice cream stands. The hikes. The book shops. Live in the world as much as you can withstand, read, draw, dance, and dream.

Then, when it’s time to write your newsletter, you’ll have a rich life to pull from.

This from Running Sucks:

“I learned about all these run clubs from Instagram, but we’re doing a new thing where if you wanna get with South Central Run Club, you have to be in our Signal chat. South Central deals with hyper-policing. Most of our runners are Black and brown and you never know when ICE is gonna pull up. Instead of broadcasting our runs and making us vulnerable to surveillance, we stopped putting it on Instagram to make people feel safer to come and hang out.“

You just never know who is watching your Instagram feed, but you can manage who’s on your Signal chat.

I spoke with Max Pete back in May, all about getting laid off, moving across country, and finding his way into a new role with a new company in a fun way. Today he writes about “removing what’s not good for you,” starting with removing Instagram.

“I don’t need to see every vacation or life update in real time. I don’t need to compare my life to someone else’s highlight reel. I just need to be where I am. And right now, that means making space. Tuning out some of the noise so I can actually hear myself think.”

Being present is one of the hardest things when breaking with social media, especially since we’re so used to picking up our phones and scrolling when waiting in line, riding on public transit, or making coffee in the morning.

When we stop seeing what everyone else is doing, we can get back to what we’re doing.

“Creativity is not something to hustle or to use.

Creativity is something to tend to, like you tend to a garden, and it in turn uses you in ways you couldn’t imagine.”

This from “This Is Drastically Changing My Creativity,” a post by Blake Roberts.

I’ve told two people this week (via my Email Guidance offering) to not set up a website. To not set up a webstore. To not start a newsletter.

These two people were still very much in the “figuring it out phase,” to which I stressed that maybe you don’t need to figure it out in public.

Not everyone wants to document the journey. It’s okay to go off and do your thing for a few months, or a few years.

Because what if you fully tend to your creative garden, without the distraction of sending a newsletter, posting on socials, or the dreaded “figuring out” your website?

I believe that if we immerse ourselves in the art, the practice, the work, that in a years time (or whatever feels right) you’ll already know what the newsletter is about.

And you’ll know exactly what sort of website you need.