Welcome (back)

When one app closes, another opens

I’m so off the grid that this photo was taken with Photobooth on my laptop. Unpictured: me churning butter and riding a pony to work.

I wrote a draft of a Substack in the first week of January titled “2025 Can Kiss My Ass.” I haven’t sent it (yet), but that may give you an idea of the tenor in which I started my year.

Personally, globally, statewide, nationwide — I hope you don’t relate, but it felt like the year started off on an, at best, odd fashion. And at worst, a really heartbreaking, devastating and unbelievable way. I won’t rehash all of that now. I did enough of that in the aforementioned drafted post. And I know you’re all thinking of something in particular. So I’ll leave it at that.

But to put it mildly, a lot was suddenly put into perspective. My time, my spending habits, my health, the way I want my brain to be used - things I tend to spend a little more time thinking about most Januaries - were all suddenly simple and clear.

I will say that it all culminated in a decision that has been a long time coming. A can being kicked and kicked and kicked down the road until it was obvious that I was actually just kicking a can against a wall so hard that it was coming back to smack me in the face.

A social media break. (Or break-up? Still not totally sure.)

I’ve been feeling the gentle tug of departure for months. In global calamities where the requisite reposting of an artful photo or shaming call to action left me feeling so hollow. In the never-ending chase of The Great Blessing by the elusive algorithm. By the consumerism that I am a TRUE slave to - urgency culture to make quick, 99% unneeded purchases (however, I will say - this hair brush was my swan song and I have to tell you - it is worth every penny x 100). The time tick tick ticking (or do I mean tik tik tiking?) by on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, eyes trained on a 6” glowing screen for (yikes) hours. The politicization of EV.ER.Y.THING. and the way that politicization was the first thing I saw every morning when I woke up and the last thing I saw before going to bed.

I also have had a quite haunting recurring image appear more and more frequently as of late. If I am so lucky, I imagine myself as a woman in her 90’s. Tits to the floor. Wearing a handmade knitted track suit. And then a dark picture: Me spending my time as I presumably have been for the past 60+ years: hours and hours of screen time a day. Scrolling past whatever content is being willingly served to me on a glowing platter. Inching closer to death and calculating the hours spent in this… yeah, I’ll say it… ‘one wild and precious life’ on my phone.

I told you! Dark!!!

The other option, of course, is that I take myself out of the game. I die, yes, still a saggy tittied queen. But one full of fresh air in my lungs, paths sojourned, hobbies tried and abandoned, eyes crinkled from squinting into the sun and a peaceful mind filled with a life and content of my choosing. It’s all very romantic in my mind. I am fully aware that my life will still also be hard with or without social media.

I really do mean this when I say that this was a personal decision and I wish I had the discipline to just “spend less time.”

But I don’t. Which is also maybe the scariest part.

The well-timed final kick in the pants I needed came in the form of an Audible (recommended by the Bad on Paper Podcast as their January book club pick) called Stolen Focus by Johann Hari (Full disclosure: I really would recommend the first half of the book and wouldn’t shut up about it for weeks - the second half got a little broad / off topic and lost me a bit). It very convincingly articulated many of the suspicions I have had for a while about why cutting the scrolling habit seems nearly impossible to do (spoiler: it’s because it’s teams and teams of people’s jobs to make it so). I also appreciated that the author/narrator came from a place of “yeah - me too” with a tech addiction of his own to grapple with.

Anyway, months of tossing and turning in this decision suddenly solidified into a pretty simple decision to move forward without. And now here I am. This is my first report.

Facts:

1. It’s been literally just like two weeks. I feel a little annoying about being on this high horse when I’m new here.

2. I still have Instagram on my laptop. I check it for about 10 minutes, once every 3-4 days. I feel fine about that.

3. I may return! Who knows!!! I have learned that it’s a very rare occurrence in life that a “never” or an “always” holds true.

4. My brain is still constantly thinking in ‘sharing.’ For basically the last 15 years of my life (wow!), I have been looking at the world in some perspective to share online. Whether it was the early days of my blog, or on social media, an element of my day to day goes through the “should I share this?” filter. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Life is meant to be shared. And I like to share my life. But I am excited to find out whether sharing a little more thoughtfully and with potentially different intentions here on Substack feels any different. Still - the habit has yet to be broken.

Speaking of sharing here, I’m not totally sure what I will be sharing here. All comfortable, long form, regularly scheduled writing muscles I may have once had are incredibly weak at the moment. I’m blabbery and slow (this post has taken me about a week to cobble together) and most of my writing lacks a specific point. Back when I was writing my blog on a nearly daily basis in college, my brain would spot blog posts everywhere I went and so it’d be fun to get that engine running again.

The standard advice given in the official How to Make a Substack Audience Grow handbook is to share something with your audience that they can take with them. Make it applicable. Share a list. Share a story, but with a moral and a conclusion. Again, I don’t have that hook nailed down quite yet. I do think it’d be fun to do a little monthly round-up? A little personal and a little producty and a little book-ish and a little food-ish? I don’t know. I have a coffee date on Saturday morning. Should I talk about that?

I think the best thing to do is just start. So, here I shall start.

EPILOGUE: Now that I’m done writing and I am about to send this out, my brain is telling me to copy the link and share it on socials. But, as we have discussed, there are no socials to share. Because, historically, audience growth was one of the major bullet points of why I shared in the first place. Still figuring out how I genuinely feel about that now? Like, can I still want growth on this Substack? Or is the point just to write and be internally rewarded? Without thinking about this for very long, I think I’m okay with wanting to grow this readership. Ugh. Idk. Something to think about during the parts of my day that used to be devoted to instagram wherein I now simply stare blankly at the floor. ALL THIS TO SAY… if you think this newsletter is worth sharing, I’d be happy to hear that. Share it. Don’t share it. Keep instagram. Throw your phone in the ocean. Definitely do smile at a stranger today, either way. We’re all just doing our best.