its just a very curious experience.

i didnt (dont?) have much stake in substack, it was not an essay meant for substack, and (yet?) it was about substack influencing. i can feel the allure of trying to perform a version of chicness, of sneakily turning up the volume on parts of my personality to be more desireable/cool, while also resenting the markers of the substack essayist style, of emulating anything to any degree if it means shifting my gaze from absolute loyalty to what i feel is true and real. the siren call of possibility of validation.

oh also this writer was kind of the type of guy i would find attractive. this comment found me at a time when the grabby, needy desire of 1) male validation 2) intellectual validation was losing its grip on me. like a strangely intense gift was being dropped on me slightly late.

im glad they deleted their account. first of all because it actually validates that my thoughts are worthwhile outside of myself, and not just to the degree of nodding in agreement, but following through! giving up substack actually feels quite big on their part. and on my part, this is much more integrated and genuine approval/feedback of my writing than if they had stayed and tried to establish a half-pr, half-genuine "writer-alliance" with me. sometimes i feel like any non- or half-private social media friendship circle is like a constant nonending press conference. visibility-alliances are such a defining part of any public social media page.... and its so easy to tangle it up with genuine friendship, curiosity etc.

now that i think about it, i never really felt i functioned "well" as a public social media personality (kpop fanart era). i dont comment and network and take part in discussions as much as people whose pages seem to work well, who seem to be made for constant digital interaction. i dont function like this, i do post and run, and that predisposes me to a high horsey position and precarious ego building if i try to become a social media personality, but i actually dont want to become that so i dont have to care, really.

secondly, for why its lucky that they deleted themselves, i dont think i can still actually bear an audience, or the validation of anyone, let alone this type of guy without caving in to inappropriate and annoying fantasies of my grandeur.

the most important connection really is to myself. through my senses i connect to the world and my feelings and through those to myself. theres no responsibility that comes before that. i dont like texting like 80% of the time and i dont wanna force it on myself! id rather meet intermittently, ideally schedule serious friend hangouts like a mutually beneficial therapy appointment, to rest in the routine and have something to look forward to, to be able to say we really are there for each other, we are reliable to someone, we have a responsibility to show up somewhere. and not have to bother with the windmill fight of grabbing time and updating in texts -- which we do out of this exhaustion and "because im not entitled to anyones time" but like no we could totally rearrange our relationship in a way that actually works and doesnt require depleting ourselves to upkeep. to isolate certain time to be really present for each other, and in the meantime, i can be present for myself in ways i enjoy myself without other people.

i realized ive been hungry since my teens cuz i thought i preferred snacking all day instead of 3 hearty meals (or at least 1-2 + some snacking). but its just a constant subdued hunger that i got really used to (in pursuit of a weak bodymind thats useful to hegemonic systems ofc; thats why lowkey-lowcal snack plates as "girl dinner" have such a sinister aura.) having a hearty meal or a good hangout feels like satisfaction, like some noise went quiet that i didnt even notice before, that i was trying to fill with unsatisfactory snacks and texts, bandaids really.

and thats fine and the incompleteness of their arguments and personal pov is basically practicing what they preach. but also! im annoyed because the presentation of these ideas on these specific platforms (youtube, substack) are just kind of a breeding ground for... misdirection. as well as the language, a lot of the time.

what i mean is that its generally easy to fall into ego traps around creation: we make stuff not only out of the joy of creation/process/reaching understanding/solving problems (of which the end result is only a side effect a lot of the time), but (with living in the physical world and forming an identity around "being an artist/creative" (yuck)), eventually we also create to survive, to be seen as clever and receive love (or some form of these core human desires to belong, be useful etc). and mediums that are monetized + governed by algorithms are stimulating these desires in a pretty enhanced way, in a way where its easy to think of your self expression/meaningmaking as something mechanizable, for a reliable source of love/feeling of being worthy. and i think (and have experienced) that creating *to receive love/to survive* eventually fails you. if it feels wrong or bad somehow, something in that construction is wrong. its not the desire thats wrong (its human nature!), its that standards/strategies for fulfilling them can be set up in a way that doesnt work.

(i get the sense that its a more complicated matter for those that end up in a situation where their livelihood is dependent on output of art and self expression, but seen that we are talking about influencers telling you to create and self express for a sort of spiritual/wellbeing reason, i think its fair to discuss this. the need to make a living notwithstanding, people with so called creative professions are the most likely to experience creative burnout, so its useful for them to consider this stuff.)

long before all these thoughts, when i was still posting fanarts, i remember saying i dont think i can create out of bad feelings, only joy. (i think even when you create out of grief or something negative, its the catharsis that could be close to joy.)

personally i get an ick from the words artist and creative (as a noun referring to a person) because these words' aura is overwhelming (to me) and that aura pushes one in the direction of focusing on identity, achievement, etc over the actual act, process, feeling of doing anything. and i actually hate it even when someone is trying to gesture towards this distinction (process>result) by saying something like "the best artists dont care about result, only process!", because why is the core of your sentence and why is your whole rhetoric once again reinforcing what to do *if you want good results*, if you want to *achieve*, *be* something. this is why im icked out by "the artist's way" even though im sure it has good advice/strategy in it. it's just: we need to critique meta stuff like these, the language around this needs adjustment if we actually want to help people with this and not trip them up in the same hole we are trying to help them out of. (same reason meditation advice from advanced meditators is so weirdly phrased and hard to understand, cuz theyre trying to not trip us up.) also sure, its a marketing strategy to title something as "the artist's way", to enhance accessibility, but like fuck that, the message of marketing still carries weight.

maybe all this is so pronounced because art is where all these problems of meaningmaking (common among all areas of life and all kinds of activity/profession cuz creation is actually everything, and core needs and ego are human nature) are the most visible. similarly, i dont think social media platforms are bad to the psyche in this sense, because all its loudness and the pronounced sense of ego/anxiety/fomo/envy/selfishness these sites evoke make it easier to sense, more visible to you where your psyche needs some attention and mindfulness.

in any case its not that i think these videos/essays are wrong/bad and not that i have a proposition for correction, i just think its worthwhile to explore what gets in the way of that abundant joy of the flowy phase of a creative practice, when you are not in that flowy phase. (the annoyance is the same whether ure witnessing a social media persons flow or reminiscing of a time when u were in the flow).