here goes nothing
Like a child being scolded over the homework she doesn’t understand, I’m frustrated. Bulbous ponds are forming in the corners of my eyes. I feel small and helpless and brand new, please someone put your already chewed food in my mouth for me. Tell me it’s safe to swallow. That I’ll be a big girl soon.
At my full height of 5 feet1, I want to feel large and in charge, established like a skyscraper staring into clouds. I want to be like those who are able to use these tools as tools—for sharing and expanding ones voice, who wield these platforms in service of their own power instead of finding themselves their servant. Is that even possible? There’s always rules one has to play by, they say [the oligarchs]. Personally, I find myself a tad tortured by them. Something isn’t clicking, selfishly, I often want more than I am given—I think this is by design. Sharing doesn’t feel like sharing, instead it feels: awaiting a response. The algorithm has never made me it’s darling. Not here and not there. It has never favored me; it feels curse-like, and as long as I think I am cursed I will search for ways to break it.
In utter You can’t fire me, I quit! energy, I turned off the ability to like, comment, and restack my substack2. You might be wondering, why even have one? I’m wondering that, too. Or, rather, I’m wondering why I’m questioning the existence of my writingbody if it isn’t directly, utterly engagable. I just keep returning to: Maybe that’s not what the work is (right now). Maybe I just need to write and let it be written without first craving some signal of its approval (or lack thereof). Maybe the hunger for all these hollow heart icons and comments of assurance cannot actually be satiated by these things themselves. Maybe I have to learn to feed myself. To flee the nest, to find the courage to flap my little baby bird wings knowing I could soar or splatter; potentially both.
No artists in history have been under this much scrutiny nor been able to compare themselves so instantaneously with one another. Why does one essay/comment get 1.2k likes and another only get 3? What makes someone resonate widely and someone slip under the radar? More importantly, why have I made this my problem to solve? Something too abstract to really figure out, but reasonable enough to lord over myself… mmm yummy. Maybe I’m too old to be this needy and this is my problem alone, well fine, maybe it’s time for me to opt out for a bit then, ay? To check in with myself and experiment with my own feelings as I turn off the (alleged) setting that can help me be known and instead choose my own oblivion. The future is dark and I am smiling.
I am lending from the energy that Life itself is an experiment. Not in an anthropocentric, scientific sense where I think I already know the answer and just need the proof, but in the way where the odds create themselves by continually rolling against the waves of chance. This is what life does. This is what artists do. They roll themselves against the waves, and into the waves, and become one with the waves. They learn to hold new shapes, to sink, sometimes they even drown. But whoever comes back up comes back up more themselves. Their mouth salty and their eyes burning and their heart pounding its own handsome rhythm. They are more at home. They are more alive. And it’s because they have tasted death—fishy seafoam with a hint of microplastic.
There is a growing number of people subscribing to this substack of whom I am grateful and amazed. Amused currently sits at 129 human subscribers, I remember when it was 40! I want to explore if this number can keep growing if I turn off the supposed functions for it’s growth. The functions I am told that make it grow. Well maybe I have my own secret functions for growth. Maybe they include my own fragility and boldness. Maybe I believe some things can grow in the dark. Maybe, dare I say this, not focusing on growth for a while is fine. We shall see.
It’s all a matter of perspective when you’re standing on a round orb that spins and spins and spins. I think the numbers offer some solace, some steady ground on what is actually infinitely, dizzyingly shapeshifting. It’s not as if the numbers are dumb or stupid or insignificant, but they’re a horrible master. They’re a disenchanting altar. A false god. They are a symbol and I guess I get to decide what I’ll make them mean. I want to make friends with them, but there’s a difference between acquaintances and childhood pals or a lover you meet traveling.
And anyway, the stakes are never as high as we think them to be.
It’s always been a life and death affair.
Play the games you want to play, don’t play the games you don’t want to play. Frequent the source, they say [the wise ones]. Go to the well within, forever offering, because it never empties because it is never full… because it never empties because it is never full. Make this your god, but not with praise, nor righteousness, nor defiance—with trust. This is the god of nothing(ness). Oftentimes out here in the wild west, we think nothing means negative or void. It’s icky and we don’t like how it feels because we can’t control the feeling. But maybe we just haven’t tried it on long enough or worn it to the right occasion. The occasion is life and it’s ending and it’s beginning, and it’s this and then that, it’s here and then gone (then comes back!). It seems so steady, so constant when really it is dissolving into and out of the intra-dynamic everything bagel that it is.
It is Whole. Complete. As it is. Just as it is.
Can I be brave—can I handle being nothing?
Can I handle writing to something beyond the false god of numbers?
Can I write to the god of nothing?
Because behind these numbers I so crave are real human beings, at least the ones who are not robots are. Ha. And I want to remember this. That a number is not just a number, it is a person. And I don’t want to treat people as numbers, just as I don’t want to be treated as merely a number. Might I invite myself into challenging that social suicide to one person could be another’s liberation. And who’s liberation am I after, after all? If it’s only my own, then I am lost. And if I want liberation for all, I must begin in myself.
I can feel a tiny finger scratching in my throat, etching into my vocals that nothing is all it ever was and is. That this is the free-est freedom and the truest truth. And that this is the sweetest love song ever rung. The chords so circular in my ears, forever leaping off and returning, spinning an ornate web into an oblivion that never ends. I am invited write from here, back into here.
Here goes nothing.
4’11 and a quarter if I’m being honest
You can still email directly, and I hope you do! You can still share my writing with others, it just can’t be restacked, apparently. I really only wished to turn off the like (heart icon) feature but learned you have to turn off everything, which I find curious. In order to be seen you have to play by their rules. Or do you? Thanks so much for following along, gang :)