It's time I stop chasing two rabbits

Prepare yourself for a good time

Yet another unrelated image from my phone’s gallery.

If you read my previous post, “There is more to life than writing,” you’ll know that I have decided, not nearly as decisively as I’m making it sound, to slightly adjust my relationship with this Substack.

What this translates to in practice is an overall simplification of my writing process in an effort—although I think it’d be more properly described as whatever the opposite of “effort” is—to take my foot off the gas peddle . . . to relieve a lot of the pressure I’ve mistakenly put on myself.

As articulated on Friday, I no longer see (or am in the process of changing my perspective) my work as something I might do to generate a steady, reliable income. In other words, I no longer see my work as work but instead as play, something I get to do, something that I don’t have to do.

For what’s to come of this, I must admit: I am very excited. Because I think it’s going to lead to an evolution in both my writing and my quality of life . . . I think I’m going to spend far less time writing (or, more specifically, editing) and simultaneously end up posting far more often than I have before, pursuing a greater breadth of subjects, thereby accelerating the rate at which I get to know myself and my interests, granting me, then, the ability to dive more deeply into the very particular things I am interested in. I anticipate, in other words, not just enjoying my writing process more, but a simultaneous flourishing of my intellect and “real world” experiences in accordance with the evolution of my Substack, along with, of course, this decrease in pressure.

Instead of focusing so much on all the things I have to do to “grow my audience” and put out my best work possible (which includes a lot of editing that ultimately drives me crazy), I’ve tasked myself, in this next step of my creative journey, with two things: writing and reading.

All I want to do each day is enjoy myself, as I once did when I was a young boy—reading encyclopedias, and The Magic Schoolbus, and The Magic Treehouse series, etc. (I know, lots of magical stuff)—by writing and reading things that I find fun and interesting. I have no content output goal, I have no networking goals, I have no reading goals . . . All I have is curiosity and time . . . I want this newsletter to become a sort of encyclopedia of me.

This doesn’t necessarily mean my genre is going to change; I think it means that I’m simply going to be writing more and more about things that I find captivating.

As you may notice (you probably won’t since I’m really the only one who’s paid any attention to what my subscribers get for subscribing), I have adjusted my subscription options and benefits accordingly. Free subscribers have access to public posts, which I assume will come at least once or twice a week, and paid subscribers have access to paid posts, which I assume will also come at least once, maybe twice a week (perhaps more, idk).

Most days for the foreseeable future, I will wake up, head to the cafe, write whatever I feel like writing about, read if I see fit, post if I feel like it, and head out, hopefully much earlier than I have been heading out for the past however many years so I may live life and be a part of the real world like a normal human. Of course, if I feel like sticking around and reading and writing for longer on any given day, then I will. But if not—if I’d rather go make a sandwich, or sell life insurance, or fish, or exercise, or head to an aquarium, or walk around—then I’ll go do something else!

Reading this, it sounds like the quality of my writing is at risk of deteriorating, and it might actually be. But what it is not at risk of is becoming any more boring.

Seeing this Substack is, in essence, my public journal, I’ve reckoned I ought to stop trying so hard to put out the best work I possibly can once a week, and instead provide readers more frequent and honest insights into what I’m experiencing so they may hopefully, as noted on my About page, “connect with themselves and find their way in what is often so confusing and misleading a world.” Not to mention, this breadth is, like I said, going to open the door for me to pursue a variety of my interests, rather than just one each week. For all I know, I’ll be writing about the bottom of the ocean in a couple of weeks! (Probably not.)

While it is true that I want to write great books and essays, stuff that’d be my best effort at having my name in the American Canon, I have for too long now made what I was born to love (A.K.A. writing) into something that was on many days unenjoyable. In addition to the fact that I believe this new approach, will probably grow my Substack a lot faster (since I’ll be posting more often), it will be a lot more fun for me—since I really, for the third time, do not enjoy editing all that much—and therefore more fun and interesting for my readers.

There’s something about excessive editing, about focusing so hard and so deeply on creating the best work possible, making sure every single syllable is concise and clear as can be, that sucks the life from my work . . . In fact, I can tell before I post how much people will or won’t like my work based on how much I enjoyed writing it. And while editing can be fun sometimes, there is very little fun in editing the same piece over and over for a week and a half. I am a writer, you see, because I love writing, not because I love editing.

Moreover, the fact of the matter is that I can only really do one thing at a time. I’ve been chasing many rabbits all these years—writing this newsletter and trying to write books and create courses and network and start a podcast and sell tutoring services—and have consequently caught none.

I am sick of running around like a madman. I am good at and enjoy this one thing: writing. And so it is what I shall do, perfect or not. The American Canon can wait.