I'm Getting Weirder on Here

Yes, I'm talking about Substack.

I’ve decided I’m keeping this more casual. I used to really like the idea of having my blog on here focused entirely on polished pieces, presenting my work after it’s been workshopped and reread and tweaked and adjusted until I was proud of it, but all that did was stop me from posting at all! Writing at all, even. That actually for real sucks. I started to fret no one gave a fuck about the writing unless it blew them away, which isn’t true. I read boring stuff all the time. I will literally read the back of a pill bottle if it’s sitting in front of me. Something has been baked into the awful part of my brain from my phone to look for words to process at any moment of the day no matter what I’m actually doing.

When I first realized the effect this was having on my practice, I was humiliated by my own ineptness. I thought I wasn’t trying hard enough to create polished pieces that stood on their own, so I would plumb the depths of my old work to hope and pray something came to me. I bought empty notebooks to convince myself I was a notebook person, which I could never be. I’m a Notes App diva until I die. Anyone who claims it’s easier to write something down than type on their phone did not grow up on the internet. Or they’re being obstinate. Which I like.

There’s so much to say about how stupid I was being, but I almost think it went hand in hand with the end of my stint in academia. I love what academia offers artists in its structure. You go to workshops to put up your mediocre essays, and they get better. And you get better, too. Hopefully. That’s actually the most optimistic description of a writing workshop ever. Most of the time, we read either someone’s old work because they didn’t feel like trying or a half-baked idea of what could maybe be an essay, but then sometimes. Sometimes, it’s like magic was in the registrar. Some administrator decided, “Yes. This workshop will make you feel like this is why you went to college.” And behold, a workshop of passionate, excited people who want to get better. The farther I am from college, the more that last part stands out to me. The want to get better. Surrounded by writers, you feel your own weaknesses more acutely. You want to fix them. It’s like some kidn of form of “be the dumbest guy in the room” and all the other corporate platitudes.

That’s (mostly, sometimes) awesome, but my entire writing career has been in that setting. I went to a performing arts middle school to study writing, where it was actually far more serious than collegiate workshops. I was literally going through puberty and figuring my shit out between workshop rounds. I came out as gay and got critiques on the poem. It has its benefits, but its made me channel this creative practice to be in search of perfection or at the very least good feedback from my peers. For so long, I structured my writing on the idea that I would show it to a group of my peers to be judged. It made me deeply insecure. I was often surrounded by child prodigies, which I am firmly not, who were published across literary journals far and wide. A fifteen year old wrote an entire screenplay so good I still remember a few of the jokes. I would spend triple or quadruple the amount of time as my peers on my workshop round and get mediocre feedback, especially in screenwriting. Sure, my grades were fine. Workshops and grades are sort of a completion act. Sure, you submitted everything. I remember I always got an A- or a B+ from one of my only two teachers. She would say that my pieces weren’t there yet, that I had to grow. I could only grow so fast, and it made me feel stupid. I HATE feeling stupid, but it made me strive to be better. I busted my fucking ass, and I did get better eventually. Maybe. I felt this inner need to improve because I was surrounded by people I admired. Jury’s still out if it worked, but I have a great vocabulary!

This is about how I stopped writing Substack. I promise. I’m fighting for my life through high school. I feel like I sorta wrote a few good essays and poems and whatnot. I even got my first piece ever published (by Hot Dish Magazine, which has now folded. The link is broken, but it was there)! I had a few forthcoming pre-COVID. RIP to a baddie. Then I get to college, and the writing workshops are so unserious. It’s more like what I was talking about before. A lot of half-assed people half-assing writing. It depressed me seeing people who were so capable wasting their potential. I was so pissed off it’s unreal, and I felt like I’m wasting so much money. I started in screenwriting classes, and people were submitting scripts riddled with errors literally ten pages short of the required count. At first, I thought I was the dumb one. Ha ha the loser tryhard tries in his work, but I talked to my friends who were equally frustrated with the state of their workshops. What could we do? We couldn’t just like matriculate at another university. This one took forever to get in to. I like it here, mostly.

Still, I went through the rounds, and for some classes, it felt like they were looking at something totally different than what I put on the page. I know from my (college, I should verify) friends, who proofread my work and whom I trust deeply with the written word, that the words made sense, but the feedback I was getting was whack. There’s always some really amazing work coming into workshop, no matter where you go. A certain kind of person craves writing and the craft. I’m obviously not the only person trying, but the qualify of work from people was astounding on the whole. I hope I don’t offend any of my college friends reading this Substack. Chances are, if you’re reading this, it’s not about you.

It made me dig my heels in, seeing these dumbass people submitting dumbass work that they’re paying thousands of dollars to get critiques. This isn’t some boohoo I’m better than everyone pitch or anything. I think if most of these people really put work into an literally anything, it would be good. They got into school for a reason. But me, I’m working my fucking ass off and making pieces that I think are at least worth a second look. I don’t give a fuck if the written annotations are just a heart every three pages and a sentence or two at the end; at least the professor will be taking a look at my words. I like words too much to let it stop me. I want to improve at this magical college place or whatever college, and by God if I improve just by writing a bunch, so be it.

Then I had a good college workshop. Intermediate Nonfiction. Alden Jones. Maybe my sixth collegiate workshop. I was tired, bro. So tired, but after the first round, I realized no one forgot their annotations. Not one. If they did, I got a text with a thorough readthrough of the piece. Whoa. This is serious. I wasn’t the only one who noticed this alignment of the stars. People tried on their work, and with creative nonfiction, there’s something so moving about seeing people try to give themselves up for you. They want to create something of their lives and show it to you, and it’s a very intimate experience to handle sometimes incredibly traumatizing things both as craft and as fact in this person sitting next to you at 10:00am on Tuesday and Thursday. I made the decision to try something new and did all sorts of weird shit, but that was only one semester.

We tried to keep the magic alive for the next semester, but it wasn’t the same. Something had shifted in the room, even our professor was confused by the sudden switchup. Lightning doesn’t strike twice etc. etc. etc.

Anyways, my Substack. I started my Substack during that period, my Magical Year of Good Workshop. I was optimistic about my own writing practice and loved the idea of a motivator that was extrinsic and yet not deeply connected to the thoughts of others the way workshop was. I even dreamed of having guest writers, ever a producer at heart. The key thing was that it was something pushing me to write, an expectation. I am not internally motivated. Maybe I’ll never be. I have to schedule something early in the morning if I want to be up early. If I don’t, I sleep until noon. Two, even. Sure, people could read it, but this was before Substack was even a big thing people I know were on. I designed all the branding to be like… real. This is Jake’s Stuff & Stuff, which is a shitty title, but it’s not just My Blog. Thus, it sat empty full of promise, too. I was so crippled by this need to make something high quality that I put this bizarre pressure on myself that was such a waste. Then I would guilt myself for not performing to my own standard I set myself (useless) and it would set empty for longer. Rinse, repeat, recycle.

I think the shift happened when I started streaming, which is an incredibly unwriterly thing to do. It felt in some ways like improv. I tell stories sometimes on stream. I talk about my day. I play videogames, but it’s literally impossible to edit. That’s the point. We are together through virtual space if you watch my stream. If I get on a tangent or whatever, it’s okay. People like a wandering commentary full of idle chatter. I didn’t realize before I started how many people listen without actually listening to me. I’m background noise, like friends, and I was staring at how few viewers I had pretty much the entire time. Depressing in the lack of interest but freeing! I felt like for the first time this fog of expectation I beat into myself after literally a decade of workshops and writing and studying was lifted, at least a little. I worried constantly how I sounded, how I looked. I still fret about that, but there were times, just those perfect times, where lightning struck and I just was immersed and reacting and having fun.

Those moments reminded me why I loved writing. There’s a flow state I reach, like that movie Soul in the floaty place with the sand, where my thoughts are clear. Where I feel like I’m finally making sense to someone. It made me want to write but more than that heal my relationship with writing. They told us in highschool that when writing becomes your job it becomes difficult to enjoy, but writing wasn’t just my job it was my whole world. It was like seeing through a haze of words at a blank page begging me to write on it, but I felt my words weren’t good enough for them. I don’t know. That’s melodramatic, but who isn’t?

So a year into streaming, and I realize I need to take a deep breath and just go for it, like I did with streaming. Take that first step. Post on here. I’m embracing the “do it scared” mentality and honestly I am a little scared. I don’t know why I am because it’s just my friends on here, but I think I’m worried no one will read this. That’s literally the antithesis of the point writing here.

Long story short, I’m changing it up. I definitely have some topics including:

1. The death of the Club and the rise of the Chatty Function

2. Gay Man Incels

3. My own (Lack Of) Sex Life

4. What is a girl who Gets It?

5. An endless sea of useless networking and maybe more job stuff?

6. Why the internet is so LOUD and the rise of “cozy content”

My favorite Substack is absolutely Mackenzie Thomas’s I Will Do Whatever I Want, so I’m thinking of some kind of like monthly recap/notes that she does. I’m playing

I don’t know. I’m just throwing around ideas, but I’m keeping it chill and trying not to overthink things. I hope it’s working. Let me know if y’all are down to clown or have any ideas, and if you aren’t fucking with the vibe, that’s okay. I get it.

Please note this is the LEAST weird and intimate I’m trying to be. Clock that, and let it sink in. More of a transition into freakyhood. <3

PS: Should I make my paragraphs smaller? Are they walls of text? I don’t know anymore.