Fun fact: only 1 out of 20 farts actually smell bad. So perhaps we should have a different word for the majority of farts that have no smell or sound. Spart? Frip? Fipple? Open to suggestions.
Bonjour strangers! Welcome to my Substack. If you like weird tangents like the one above, you’re in the right place. I found my way here after taking a post-breakup social media hiatus. After a few months of self-reflection, I wanted to dip my toes back into the online waters — as I do see the value in being connected to larger circles in other areas of the world. As an elder millennial, I struggle to find most memes funny and get annoyed how you must be chronically online to get the niche jokes or references. On top of that, the pure anger and vitriol I see has me avoiding comments sections altogether. It’s concerning to me how this is a form of entertainment for many people. I respect and value the tools the internet has provided, but I’ve found my online social experiences wholly unfulfilling.
I finally feel I’ve found my space in Substack – so many other writers and thinkers who post with thoughtfulness. People who genuinely want to contribute, not criticise.
Despite my “grown up” career being in graphic design, I’ve always found great joy in writing. When I was in fifth grade, I wrote a YA novel about a young mystery-solving duo who foiled a plot to kidnap Kristi Yamaguchi (lol oh, the 90s). I’d give anything if I still had that rough manuscript printed out on accordion paper. I diligently pulled the perforated edges off each page being as careful as I could not to tear one and have to reprint the whole thing. I looked at all of my favorite books in the school library and saw most of them were published in New York City. I wrote the address for Bantam Books in a red grade school folder with daydreams of being the youngest published author in the US. No clue if that would even be true if this had happened. This was pre-internet and you couldn’t do a quick search of “youngest published author in the US”. My mom, her unreliability which I’m sure I’ll get into on other posts, never got around to mailing the manuscript and who knows what ever happened with it. Something probably innocuous to her, but was the first of many dreams dashed.
As an adult, I’d offer to write marketing copy at pretty much any job I had. I’d casually edit pieces nobody asked me to and often be ignored because I “wasn’t a writer”. Whether it was poetry or song lyrics or the novel I’ve been working on for the better part of 2 decades (ugh!) – I’m a writer who has hesitated to call herself a writer. Until now. This is the first step of taking that life-long passion and showing it to the world, unashamed. I’m sure I’ll sprinkle a bit of everything in here and I hope any readers who find their way to my words will appreciate the musings of a madwoman.
I decided I needed an outlet to be more intentional with my output – considering how few friends I have who are willing to listen. Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of friends. It’s the willing to listen bit that seems to get lost. I find people mostly want to talk in stats that they read online. It’s conversation based solely on non-fiction and if you haven’t read that article or gone down that Wikipedia rabbit hole, you’re not part of the conversation. People these days get annoyed if you ask any question that could be Googled. There’s no patience for hypothesizing or excited rambling or discussing what if because most people already know because they read it online. I’m dependent on the internet like anyone else, but I’m not addicted to it. And personally, I don’t want the definitive answers to all of my human questions. For most of our history, we haven’t had this resource at our fingertips and managed just fine. Often I sit in a crowded place and see everyone on their phones while I’m the only one looking around making up backstories for all the strangers while they crouch over devices. It’s made the people-watching much more boring.
Anyway, another tangent. Get used to that.
I’ll do my best to stay on track. My main goal here is to relight the spark of my writing. To get the thoughts out of my head and not dump them onto friends who never asked how I was feeling in the first place. My writing here will be to hopefully answer the questions that I don’t want to immediately Google. My place for hypothesizing and wondering. My place for processing the highs and lows of life, love, and loss. Let’s see what happens.