Trying to read my Substack feed right now – as relentlessly as I have tried to curate it – is to witness everyone having a breakdown in real time. “How to meet the coming economic shockwave” scrolls past, directly above “Workout clothes I’m buying this spring.” Okay! “Macabre discovery at Nazi euthanasia castle sheds light on current debate” (yes that’s real and no I’m not linking to it) would be startling even if it didn’t flitter by right after a newsletter about “Dresses with grown-up hemlines.”
I don’t know how to make Substack understand that I cannot, do not, will not, under any circumstances, ever want to spend a single minute of my spare time reading about the specific and painful ways in which the world as I know it is about to collapse.
If you know me, you know that I follow Amanda’s Mild Takes on Instagram and now here on Substack as well. She’s not for everyone! (As she herself has said.) However, for me, she has been a voice of reason and realism.
Amanda would call a lot of what I’m seeing on Substack right now “thought-limiting cliches,” meaning that by saying stuff like “well we won’t have elections anymore” or “well we’re all going to be sent to camps” you are giving yourself an excuse to do nothing and let all the bad stuff just happen. And sometimes I do think these things because what the fuck! Is even! Happening! Most of the time!?!??
But I also need to go to work and do the stuff they pay me to do, and take the dogs to the vet and what have you. I always laugh when I see that meme about how “I can’t believe we had a pandemic and a coup and just kept going to work” because my sweet brother in Christ, what were we supposed to be doing instead? Defaulting on our mortgages and going to live in the forest? Do what you need to do, but at this point, I will not be adding more bureaucratic complications to my personal docket.
The other thing happening on Substack is the Glennon Doyle controversy, which is about as stupid as everything else on the internet. Glennon Doyle can do whatever she wants, literally and figuratively, but my personal annoyance stemmed from the fact that there seemed to be no escaping her thanks to people “restacking” everything she farted out into the discoursosphere. I don’t think she is a good or interesting writer and it is definitely a choice to name your podcast something that sounds like a YouTube channel designed to teach toddlers how to navigate their Big Feelings, but, she’s a rich successful author beloved by millions and I am not, so, it just goes to show you: nobody knows shit. (This will be carved on my headstone.)
The end result of the uproar was that Glennon flounced off the platform due to being bullied, and I gotta say: girl no. That was criticism. Unfair? Perhaps. But it happens. And for all of the people carrying water for this New York Times best-selling multi-millionaire married to a legitimate sports hero: you are certainly within your rights to write about that rather than all the interesting stuff going on in your wild and precious life, but as an avid consumer of personal essays with limited bandwidth, I would rather read about the latter.
We have a busy week coming up. We are going to a wine tasting thing tonight, and the Fontaines show is on Thursday, and then Sunday is, of course, Mother’s Day, a whole Thing I may tell you about in more detail another time when I am less mad about it. Suffice to say my family has peculiarities around event planning that do not exactly align with MY peculiarities, and this causes strife (mostly mine).
After that event, I will not be doubling up on any more holidays or occasions for a while. I will be celebrating the birthday or the graduation or the whatever exactly once, and then I will be retreating into my craft hole with my quilting and my diamond painting. If this sounds grinchy of me then so be it. I hate fuss and I really hate unnecessarily complicated logistics that are planned that way on purpose to nobody’s benefit.
In other words, invite me to your next occasion, I’m fun!