Odofemi

My current project is the collected writing of a certain Hussy dear to us all, and this week I have been forensically examining both her email inbox and livejournal. Waves of nostalgia keep knocking me off balance, memories overwhelming me — first of her, of my time in Brooklyn, of our several shared exes, and then of my own little life on livejournal back in the day where I first chewed my little milk teeth as a writer. It's made me realize that I miss the daily flow of writing for a select audience. My substack feels too professional for my silly thoughts, given how successful some of the pieces have been, and there just simply isn't another platform that we all use in the same way we once used livejournal, blogspot, and tumblr.

This drive toward professionalization, to ensuring our output is polished and clean, is part of the broader problems with a post-algorithm internet. Basically: it's no fun anymore. Or, at least, I am not having fun. It may be a me problem. The young people seem to be having a great time crashing out on TikTok.

The past few years have been eaten up by work on various film projects, a handful of which have been successful but most of which are stalled in development hell. Working in the Hollywood machine, even by correspondence, has flattened much of my creativity. When the next thing you do could at any point suddenly become The Thing That Changes Everything! and potentially earn you multiple years' salary, you become willing to jump through any hoop, to let go of any aspect no matter how much it means to you. And in this way, you die as a writer. And my writing has died. How much have I published in the past four years? A handful of essays. And still no closer to my real goal: the next book.

When I was made redundant from my Big Gay Job last year — my year of perdition, coinciding as it did with the end of a two year relationship and the loss of my human rights — I expected to have loads of time on my hands. Time that I might spend writing, or perhaps looking for a job. And while I did lay around in a haze of depression and disordered eating for a couple of months, I soon found myself busier than I'd ever been. Projects everywhere I turned. But none of it for pay — or rather, 'on spec,' the carrot jiggled in front of my face that perhaps, if we're lucky, someday we will be paid some unknown astronomical amount that would make it all worth it. That day kept not arriving, despite producers and directors promising me (with good, genuine hearts) that it was just around the corner. And as it kept not coming, my bank account kept shrinking.

I love film, but I miss writing. I miss my own words, words that are to please myself, over which I have near total control, that no director or producer will rewrite or 'note.' I'm not so naive as to believe writing essays and blogs and stories and books is entirely set apart from the same market forces that rule Hollywood, but there is a greater level of control. And, indeed, satisfaction.

In some ways, I think my success over the past decade and change has also bottlenecked my creativity. The stakes are higher now. Having once found success, failure becomes a real and increasingly terrorizing possibility. This kills the work.