In this blog post: I hate substack, what is fame and do I want it?, and more.

Today I played badminton with some friends from work, but, before that, I spent hours at work watching youtube while I worked. Youtube was not hitting like it usually does today, and I think I may have already scrolled through literally every post on Pinterest twice already, so I opened up substack. I used to loveee substack.

I first got on substack when I was 17, in my senior year of high school. At the time, I had no idea what I want to do with my life (still don't), but I knew I liked writing. I saw this one girl on tiktok promoting her substack, so I made one for fun and wrote a few posts and a few friends told me they were impressed with my writing. It was awesome. Back then, substack functioned like a blog for me, if maybe slightly more formal? Kind of like every blog post had a theme or some kind of social commentary. I would talk about whatever had been on my mind, but I usually had something interesting to say with it. I mean, I was 18, so you can imagine that, to an adult, they don't read as the most profound revelations, but they were okay.

When I got to university, I pretty much stopped writing for a while. In the moment, I would've said that was because I didn't have time. Looking back, I think the issue was mroe that I didn't have anything interesting to say anymore. I didn't use my free time to read or think. I used it to obsess over my boyfriend and my skin and marriage, which eventually left me a hollow shell of a person. I did actually write a few pieces in my first year, but they all read like fucking advice columns, and by the way, who made me feel like I was in any position to be giving anybody advice? Please, don't ever take my advice, ever.

But anyway, I wrote those advice columns and hated them. When I broke up with my boyfriend, I wrote a few super emotional pieces that, now, just real like word vomit to me. I did like this one excerpt from one of them:

I deleted almost everybody I knew off my socials, tried to start a youtube channel, failed, fell on my face, let go of a few dreams and stopped looking for new ones to replace them. Maybe I won’t be who I thought I would be. Maybe you take some hits that you can’t recover from. Maybe I have taken too many steps backward to take any more forward. Maybe I have sunk too much time into fruitless endeavours, and now all I have to do is wait out the rest of my life. Drink some coffee. Watch the news.

I hate to be this person, but, back when I got on substack (the first time), it was full of people who were writing actually creative pieces. Some of my pieces are truly terrible, but all of them are creative. After my first year of university (around 2023 or 2024) was when Substack pivoted and became the corporate hellhole it is today. You have to wade through endless streams of "essays" that are just garbage to find one good one, and the majority of people on there use it as a corporate newsletter, or a blog for a business. That's fine, honestly. The company is probably doing much better now than it was back when it's primary user base was angsty bisexual teenage girls. But it means something to me, that change.>

If substack has changed, my writing has changed with it. Back in high school, I used to write so freely. Every terrible thing that had happened to me was up for discussion. Nothing was too emotional, no metaphor was too in your face - and, obviously, when you're writing something for a wider audience it actually does you real good to show restraint. But my early writing represented the same thing much of the early writing on Substack represented: a total freedom, a place to be creative and corny and terrible because, honestly, maybe like five people would ever read your work.

Maybe that was just the culture post covid honestly. For the briefest period in time, I felt like I could do whatever, post whatever, like social media and the internet were their own kind of art form. I miss that, really, I do. I don't just miss pre-corporate Substack or being able to write about sad things without wanting to throw up. I miss the era of the internet where I wasn't afraid of judgement. Or maybe I just miss being totally isolated, not having to face any judgement in real life. In reality, there were probably as many people judging then as there are now, but I never had to see them.

I struggle to write substack pieces at all anymore because I can't pretend that vulnerability on the internet doesn't have real life consequences. Really, when I put some piece of personal info out there, people from work and school can find it and read it and know about parts of me that I would never talk about out loud. I can't talk nearly as well as I can write. (The bar is not high tbh).

I've been thinking about COVID-era fame over the last few days. Well, actually, let me give you some context. For the last few months I've been thinking about the idea of fame in general. I want to be many things: an author, a screenwriter, a director, and a poet. I'd like to be in a band and I'd like to try my hand at political commentary. I don't think I'd be a very good comedian but that looks fun, too. And most of the things I want don't actually come with big levels of fame, but, when I was younger, I was convinced I was destined for fame. As most teenagers are. Or maybe just the narcissistic ones?

But, as I think about what I really want out of life, I think fame would leave me temporarily overjoyed and ultimately suicidal. I don't think I can handle much attention. I am too self-critical, and I enjoy privacy way too much. So I started thinking about why I want to be famous in the first place, and I arrived at some concerning but obvious conclusions. I want attention. I want people to want to listen to me talk. And I want to be wanted; for some reason the made-up version of me in my head that is famous is also beautiful, as if getting famous would just magically change my physical appearance. Really, though, nothing I want out of fame has anything to do with what I want out of writing, my craft. I want fulfillment, peace, to get to wake up each day and burn some of the creative energy that eats at me. I want to write so many things that I have a stack of books in my future home that is just my own work. That is what I want. Fame has nothing to do with that. But, when I think about not being famous, I am soul crushingly disappointed. The sentence "You are not going to have a meteoric rise to fame like the two dudes from Heated Rivalry" has the same effect on me as "Your entire family is dead and you're next."

So I've been trying to make sense of why I want something that I know won't make my life better in any tangible way so badly. And I started thinking about when I really got obsessed with the idea of fame, and it was around COVID. I would watch people getting famous just by making videos of themselves talking, saying funny thing or making political commentary, and I was decent at both of those things. But I was young, and I'm glad I had the foresight not to post a bunch of political takes to tiktok at 15.

I did, however, post little snippets of my substack pieces when I was in high school. That was some of the most fun stuff I ever did on the internet. I would have fun recording the tiktoks, but more than that I would have fun coming up with the instagram stories and posts to go with them. I would have fun with the creative part, the part where I got to post funky stuff to my socials and not get judged for it because people were actually impressed with my writing (and by people I mean my three friends).

So when I think back to where the notion of fame really started for me, it started from a desire to be able to be creative online without judgement. For people to look past the weird and instead focus on my creativity and my talent. Now, after years of letting it get tangled up in other nonsense, fame is about beauty and attention and narcissism - but that's not where it started, doesn't reflect what I actually want.

I think only a certain kind of person can handle fame, and it does invovle a certain level of narcissism. Which I definitely have. The narcissism part. But I also think it's easy to be self-obsessed, and, for most people, it's equally easy to be humble. Being a humble person involves self-work, but (I think) it's not so hard for most people. I think the really hard thing is walking the line. Humility comes with self-criticism; that's just the deal we get, I think, but I do think it's worth it. But if you are truly conscious of your flaws, your limitations, then it would be pretty difficult to accept something like fame, which is almost never deserved- firstly because people rarely do anything worth the amount of fame they get, and secondly because fame comes with an absolute shit ton of money, and a good chunk of famous people have way more money than they deserve. So the average person gets caught in quite the dilemma. Do I lean into the narcissism and believe I deserve this, I worked for it, or do I hold on to the humility and believe that this just happened upon me - and, if it all is just a coincidence, what do I do with it?

Anyway, side tangent. Sorry. The point is that I have a lot of trouble walking that line in just normal, ordinary life. There is a certain level of narcissism invovled in even just posting yourself online. You believe people should see you and praise you. I don't think I believe that. I don't think I feel that way about myself at all, but I do want it anyway. Does that make me crazy? Terrible? I don't think I really deserve to post creatively online without judgement, because what makes me more exempt from judgement than the next person? But I still want it. I don't want the kind of internet fame that the COVID-era influencer had, but I want to be able to put my creativity in my favourite place - the Internet Of Things - and I want it to be loved, and I want that love expressed to me.

Anyway, I'm not exactly sure what I want. I know I want to write, but I have trouble still pinning down what exactly. The point of it all, for me, is fun. I want a career where I'm having fun, even when the work is at its hardest. I think a lot of people convince themselves that work shouldn't be fun, that they should just buckle down and do their work and be okay with half or more of their life being about disconnecting from themselves to make money. And, to be clear, I don't think that's wrong. I think a lot of people value the financial security that comes with that, and don't see it as a waste because their top priority is securing their and their family's financial future, which is its own kind of important. But I also think an equal amount of people are lying to themselves, have let themselves be lied to about what our priorities are allowed to be. Mine is fun. Mine is storytelling. My top priority in life is chasing down the things I want to do relentlessly.

But I don't know yet what that entails, if it makes me a narcissist to want to post about that online. To want to post about a lot of things online. There are parts of my career that I have no inclination to post about. For example, I have never understood how people can set up a camera and film themselves writing. I look like a crazy person when I do that. I worry that the things I do want to post online, I only want to post for attention, because I am enamored with the idea of "fame".

It's all big and confusing, but less confusing than it was a week or two ago. And I'm learning to live a little in the confusion. The snippet I posted earlier: " I deleted almost everybody I knew off my socials, tried to start a youtube channel, failed, fell on my face, let go of a few dreams and stopped looking for new ones to replace them." Feels relevant to me now as much as it did when I first posted it. I have fallen on my face a million times, let go of a ton of dreams, and I have found beautiful things in the time where I was not looking for ones to replace them.

Today I played badminton with some friends from work, and I came home tired and happy. I'm not sure yet exactly what my dreams entail, but I give myself room to ponder, to sit in the confusion without hunting for an answer, and in that I find out so much about myself. I know what makes me passionate. I know what I enjoy. I know what I could do, over and over, for the rest of my life. And each day I allow myself to enjoy the confusion, I understand more about myself. In the meanwhile, I'm content to find joy in the simple things.