Interlude: Wayfinding

On gathering my strength, relocating my path, and sharing these words unpaywalled going forward

Photo by Dariusz Sankowski on Unsplash

Firstly, I just want to thank you all for being here, for sticking around to read the words I share, infrequent as they are. It’s difficult to not hold myself to an unreasonable standard—at this time last year I was moving at a clip that made me so happy, writing 1000-1500 words a week and hosting a meetup to discuss the concepts they addressed and other assigned readings, films, and other media around them. My work was squarely in the place I like to be: thinking, reading, writing, sharing resources, and discussing how to bring these concepts into everyday actions; all in community with others. I want to get back to this place and ultimately, that is the goal—I very much want to start offering monthly self-guided courses and community around these topics again.

But I’ve been feeling stuck. So I’m currently in the process of re-evaluating all the essays I have outlined—nearly a year’s worth—with who I am in the world, and what it is that I really want to say. I guess I’m taking a hard look at what I have outlined to ask myself, “Is this truly what I have in me to say, or is it what I think I’m supposed to be writing about?” This morning, I can’t really say that I know for certain. And that’s why I’ve been moving so slow. It's too easy to put myself in the corner of a room in the shape of unrealistic expectations. It's the room that is the problem. I've never been so good with angular spaces. I need to break free of the room to traverse more expansive terrain.

I am wayfinding, and looking to the stars, to the land, rivers, seas, mountains, and forests to guide me. I'm hoping to learn their names and their stories and all they have to teach me. In finding these, I am finding my way. I need to remember what is my way. The old map no longer describes the territory I thought I knew. I think maybe I'm traversing entirely new territory; or at least, finding new vantage points of where I've been before. But I have to slow down to find out. 

I’ve pulled back from social media and deactivated my accounts to come back to myself, my own thoughts, my own conclusions, and to get back to a place where my own voice comes forward again. Sometimes I worry about this—during breaks like these, I always feel the distance between me and community acutely, and I worry that I’ve broken trust by departing from our shared spaces. Or I fear that people think I’m no longer engaged with the world and its issues. On the contrary, what has been happening is in accordance with my goals. I’m slowly beginning to reach out directly to my friends more often, I’m finding I have a bit more energy to show up in closed online spaces where I feel community is being carefully tended and nurtured, and I feel I'm returning to a place where I’m able to more concretely formulate my thoughts around local and international issues of climate, social, and political justice that I care about. I’m starting to see how the undercurrent threads of spirituality, cultural [re]connection, and philosophy need to come to the surface more in beauty, in prose; I need to show the world how I’m dreaming. All of this combined makes my purpose and my work more clear. When I step back into our shared public spaces, my presence will be more grounded and my voice will be stronger and clear.

It is a privilege to be able to pull back, to slow down, in the midst of great urgency. But also, I'm never truly separated from the issues of oppression that marginalized people face daily—neither the ones that directly impact me, nor the ones that don't, because we are all participants. None of us are yet free. There is no global injustice that does not have a presence where we live. There is always work to be done, right here at home. And the truth is, I don't actually get to slow down. Not really. Like a lot of working-class people, I’m writing and creating social media materials in the hours between the work I have to do to pay the bills. As a freelancer, I have to take what I can get because I don’t always get something. And as a queer neurodivergent person who lives with chronic daily pain and disability, depending on how much work I’ve had in any given week, my energy is going to be depleted. Honestly, I just can’t do it all, anymore. I don't think anyone really can.

So I am traveling in the opposite direction of many others I know, who are putting their writing practice at rest to continue engaging on social media. For me, the work is not only there but explicitly in the writing itself, and that is where I find my greatest connection—in the practice of writing, I’m distributing resources and hashing out the ideas that I want to see lead to slower, deeper thinking and ultimately, more effective action in our daily lives. The point is not to disappear or disengage. Not at all. In fact, the point is to work towards the opposite and dig deeper in. 

As I recalibrate into this slower, smaller world, I’m working on reaching out to people more deliberately, to stay in touch and stay in community. Being in community inherently brings with it a process of accountability. We don’t let go of people we care about. We don't let people we care about, go. In stepping away, I'm working towards a place where I can draw myself nearer—to those I care about, to the work I love and care about most and am best at, to the ideas and concepts that form the dynamic catalysts for effective action. I draw nearer to the world I want to see brought to life, and the people I want to be with on the way, and once we get there. If you're here, I'm full of gratitude that you're on this journey with me.

Now! For a bit of an announcement about the structure of this space…

As of today, my Substack subscription structure has changed. I'm working on the details of an offering for paid subscribers that I think might be pretty awesome, and fun for me. I’d like for you all to have something special from me in gratitude for your support. But I want all the writing here to be accessible to everybody. I've been thinking hard about what it means to be a person who values resource-sharing and the exchange of ideas, and the problems of putting the conversations I want to have behind a paywall. Withholding is an explicitly capitalist tactic, cultivating scarcity through imposing an arbitrary value onto something by making it broadly inaccessible. But what if the value of something exists precisely because it is available to everyone? So now, all my essays are available to everyone, whether a paid or a free subscriber. 

For those who can pay, your paid subscription, whether monthly or founding member, lets me know you value and have faith in my work and are willing to engage in reciprocity. That motivates me because the more paid subscribers I have, the more able I am to set aside the time to do this work—as a freelancer to pay the bills, I often have to choose between working for someone else and researching and writing on my own topics, which are featured here. 

Offering this writing for free and putting my faith in you to support me outside the producer/consumer binary, and pressure to create even at the cost of quality, means that I’m living up to my ideals and ethics to create as much good thoughtful work and access to idea and resource-sharing as as possible, and that we're on good standing with each other in conversation and community. 

At some point, I’d like to open up a Library tab, where I’ll be adding a living list of resources, and a worksheet for the monthly topic with journaling prompts for reflection and self-paced study. I’m still figuring out exactly how that will work for some of the things I want to share, but I’m looking at using Are.na as my organizational tool. 

Well, that’s the news for now. Thanks again, so much, for being here—it means the world to me!