(abandoned substack draft)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have seven different tabs open right now, each with a different draft of a different substack essays. And I think it\u2019s time for me to face the fact that I have spiralled beyond what is feasible. I\u2019m knotted. I\u2019m tired. I have this grand vision that I\u2019m trying to enact, but it\u2019s bigger than I can manage, and I am surrendering for now. I am ending this particular \u201cwork session\u201d, which has lasted, gosh\u2026 months?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wish I could show you what I\u2019m seeing. It\u2019s big, bold, beautiful, intricate, detailed, interconnected, everything makes perfect sense, everything shines with light and laughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I want to write about plaintext literacy, and teach people how to read. I want to write about teenagers and technology. I am so tired. I wanted to write about tiredness and knottedness. I want to stop being tired, which means resolving that knottedness, which means publishing something, anything. Or maybe going upstream and asking myself why I hold myself hostage with my publishing schedule. I usually say that\u2019s not a good idea, but maybe this moment is not the usual moment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why do I hold myself hostage with a publishing schedule?<\/strong> Well, I\u2019m 32 years old. I want to support a family. I want to help people. I want to do good work. There\u2019s a line from the latest book that\u2019s released of Steve Jobs\u2019 writing: \u201cYou appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear.\u201d I am stressing about because I want to blaze in the sky. I feel like I have the opportunity to blaze really gloriously and help a lot of other people blaze gloriously too. But\u2026 why is that a source of stress? Why am I stressing out instead of being happy? Why do I feel muscular tension in my body right now? Well as I type this out I feel some of the tension leaving. Wait, it\u2019s all a game, I\u2019m reminded. I can breathe. I can laugh. It\u2019s all silliness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reently Twitter had something of a minor existential issue \u2013 they were banning Substack links, which\u2026 not only is that bad for Substack writers, its also contrary to the spirit of the internet, and therefore bad for Twitter too. I found myself experiencing some dread. Like, oh no, if Twitter is going to destroy itself\u2026 I\u2019m going to have to start over. Since then, Bluesky started taking off, where I now have over 1,000 subscribers, and I feel a little less anxious about that. And Twitter has undone the Substack thing, thankfully. But what if those things didn\u2019t happen? I would have to start shilling my stuff on Farcaster\/Warpcast and Mastodon and YouTube and\u2026 it would be like starting from scratch all over again. It would be like starting a new job. I felt stupid for trusting the platform that much. Envious of VGR for seeing the writing on the wall so early. But then and again, he\u2019s\u2026 suited for that. I\u2019m the opposite. I\u2019m Mr Switchboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n watched beef recently, very stressful but great. similar to everything everywhere all at once. maybe i should rewatch both and write something about it. is that what i want to do? what od i fucking want to do lol. this is my problem. mf wrote a book called introspect and then stopped introspecting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What do I want to do? I want to feel like I\u2019ve earned my rest. Why does rest have to be earned? It doesn\u2019t, but I have this narrative in my head that you have to earn it. Okay, so what do you have to do to earn it? You have to publish something. Why? Because you\u2019re a writer and writers write. Okay. So maybe instead of focusing on publishing\u2026 just write a fuckton of nonsense?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I just have so much stuff. and when I have a lot of stuff I feel like I shouldn\u2019t write more stuff. what bullshit is that? that\u2019s some scarcity mindset bullshit. Why am I expecting things to be good? I can just keep making stuff. I know that I am capable of being a supergenerator if I don\u2019t hold myself back. And I have been holding myself back so much all the time, why? what am I afraid of? i\u2019m afraid of fucking up. but i haven\u2019t really fucked up in a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n what if you committed in advance to writing 30 average substack essays?<\/p>\n\n\n\n i am always giving away my riches and i get resentful when it feels unappreciated. so I should write a substack post with some of these riches<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n (18apr2023)<\/p>\n\n\n\n For over a year now \u2013 ever since I published my second ebook Introspect<\/em> in February 2022 \u2013 my dominant preoccupation in life has been \u201cthinking about my substack essays\u201d. In that time, I\u2019ve only published 7 essays, of which I\u2019m only really satisfied with 2. On the other hand, I have a sprawling junkyard of dozens of drafts, hundreds of snippets, easily over 100,000 words written and set aside in frustration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know that the moment I publish one \u2013 and maybe it will be this one \u2013 I will experience the satisfying relief that washes over me every time I publish anything substantial. I have published enough writing over the years to confidently know this to be true for me. And yet, the annoying tease is, I can\u2019t bring myself to \u201ccheat\u201d by simply writing up some filler, hitting publish and calling it a day. I\u2019ve tried to plead with my internal editor about this, but that guy is stubbornly uncompromising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A part of me knows that what I\u2019m looking for is something like \u201cthe right frame\u201d. I remember there were moments when I found it with both of my books. With Friendly Ambitious Nerd, it was the moment the title clicked for me. I felt a great swelling inside me, knowing that the book was going to really resonate with people. The book itself, honestly isn\u2019t all that great yet. I pulled together a bunch of notes, twitter threads and blogposts into a haphazard motley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2731<\/p>\n\n\n\n 28dec2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve been spending months writing inside my head. This might seem like a bullshit excuse if it comes from someone who doesn\u2019t produce any written output, but I\u2019m always tweeting, I\u2019ve written two books and hundreds of blogposts\/essays\u2026 so I think I\u2019ve earned the right to say that I do do my writing inside my head. I\u2019m just thinking a lot. Maybe it\u2019s more elegant to say \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking a lot\u201d, though even here I imagine there are questions that arise for some along the lines of, \u201cto what end? Is that productive? Are you overthinking unhelpfully?\u201d And the answers to each of those questions are, \u201cI don\u2019t know yet, I don\u2019t know yet but I think it will be, and I don\u2019t think so.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve spent quite a bit of time \u2013 at least a decade, I would say \u2013 somewhat obsessively collecting thoughts, ideas, recording events, stories, perspectives. I\u2019m a sort of amateur historian, keeper of anecdotes. Why do I do this? I could come up with a few different reasons. One is that I\u2019ve always loved books and libraries. Why? Well, they feel like home to me. They give me a sense of belonging. I am a citizen in the land of letters, a student of symbols, purveyor of pamphlets.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \/\/ abandoned<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (abandoned substack draft) I have seven different tabs open right now, each with a different draft of a different substack essays. And I think it\u2019s time for me to face the fact that I have spiralled beyond what is feasible. I\u2019m knotted. I\u2019m tired. I have this grand vision that… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[727],"tags":[730],"class_list":["post-13591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drafts","tag-substack"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s5gxNz-stressin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13592,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13591\/revisions\/13592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}