Doing the Unstuck

Yep, the title is a Cure song and I'm ending this post with a Taylor Swift lyric

I had such ambitious plans for this space. I remember my head swirling with anxious energy when I hit publish on the first post. Scribbled lists in journals and in my Notes app with ideas for topics. It felt big. It felt urgent.

It doesn’t feel like much these days. It certainly doesn’t feel big. It feels like a tiny mouse door, tucked behind an oversized arm chair in the farthest corner of the internet.

But don’t take it as self-pity or a cry for validation. Something I’ve learned over the last few years is that most of the things that feel urgent in my heart and head are far from it. Writing here and in journals for the first time since my mid twenties has helped me make sense of some of the tangles in my head. I’m not embarrassed or regretful that this blog didn’t become what I hoped it would. I’m grateful. I’m even kind of glad.

One of the things I thought I would talk about here is my struggle with anger. I’ve carried anger inside me for as long as I can remember. When I share this with folks, the response is usually incredulity. That’s so surprising. I don’t think of you as an angry person. Ask my mother, who has shepherded me through and suffered its scorching heat more times than I can count. It rages in my veins like fresh lava. Or at least it used to.

It’s still there, pulsing away, but for now it’s tempered by a new feeling. Calm. Sometimes it even feels like peace.

Which is great for my mental health, but not great for the subject of this blog/newsletter.

When I created this Substack, I wanted to fight, to rage, to slay some MFing demons. The world had been consumed by crisis consciousness and I was wrapped up in it, hard. The world that seemed to be burning around me matched the burning inside myself. All consuming and terrifying, I wanted it OUT of me.

So I wrote. I read. I sought understanding of myself, my friends and family, and for the first time really sought to understand the people in this world I’ve considered opponents, evil, crazy, deplorable, different, less than—you get the picture.

And doing all of that has put many things into perspective. It’s soothed my raging heart and given me more compassion.

Am I going to become best friends with people who hold vastly different values than I do? No. Am I going to let the parent I went no-contact with last year back into my life? Nope. But in the process of seeking out diverse viewpoints and truly trying to understand more of the people I share the planet with, I have softened my judgment and by extension my rage. And it feels fucking good.

And I realized I don’t really want to spend my time on the internet wading into the culture wars or trauma dumping. Big conversations, for me at least, deserve face to face or even voice to voice communication.

I also realized that many of the other topics I wanted to cover here were more about my own inner work that is too messy and personal to articulate in a few hundred words. It was starting to feel too limiting.

So, if you’ve stayed for this whole long thing, you’re probably curious to know what, if anything, is going to come of this. Well, don’t worry, I still have plenty of things I’m afraid of, but I’m hoping to have a bit more fun with it.

I’ve always wanted to write about music. I even wrote a few album reviews several years back, and it was terrifying. What if my opinions were not well received? What if fans thought I didn’t get the album I was reviewing? I never read them once they were published, too afraid of the attacks I was certain I would get for having thoughts about Blink 182’s first album without Tom DeLonge (I thought it was pretty good, actually).

So instead of talking about the things I’m afraid of in the world, I’m going to work on how to tackle the things I’m afraid to do in the world. Like share my opinions about music. Level-up my career. Be more honest in situations when I feel like I’m stifling myself. Put myself out into the real world and see what happens. Create more than I consume. The internet is great, but I am prone to getting sucked into rabbit holes that leave me idle and wanting more from life. I thought I needed to get a flip phone and delete all of my social media to do that, turns out I just need to fuel myself with the things I love, instead of the things that make me rage and despair.

I wanna be defined by the things that I love
Not the things I hate
Not the things I'm afraid of,
Or the things that haunt me in the middle of the night
I, I just think that
You are what you love

— “Daylight” Taylor Swift

If you’re reading this, I love you. Thanks for reading.