Hello, head demon
You’d think after doing this Substack thing for nearly two years I’d have it aaaaaallll figured out.
Well, maybe you wouldn’t think that, but that’s what the little demon of unhelpful comparisons shouts at me inside my own head. He (obviously it’s a he) loves to point at all the younger, fresher ‘stacks that have bigger audiences, more predictable publishing cadences, and clearly delineated topics of focus, and say, “What the hell are you doing, bro?”
While it seems doubtful I’ll either fully satisfy or exorcise this feel-bad-friend at the moment, I must concede he has a point.
What am I doing?
Nothing.
Or at least, nothing outwardly. Inwardly, I’m hopping around at least six different potential courses of action like I’m playing THE FLOOR IS LAVA!
But the floor is not lava. The floor is making an actual decision.
Yes, I am aware that my metaphor is not structurally sound. Much like the rocking chair I broke when I was 11 playing that game.
When I came here to type this out, I intended to run a poll. It was going to go something like this:
Which of these two basic publishing cadences would you prefer, when it comes to Dispatches from Inner Space?
Long posts every 2-4 weeks
At least one post every week, maybe more
But I’m not going to run a poll. I think maybe ten of you would even respond to it, which would leave the results hilariously unrepresentative of your actual preferences. As to those actual preferences, I believe the majority of you would say you don’t really care, as long as I don’t send you a bunch of annoying garbage.
You didn’t subscribe based on publishing cadence expectations, and you’re not going to unsubscribe based on those non-existant expectations.
So I am hereby writing myself the permission slip that will allow me to publish whatever I feel like publishing, as long or short as that may be, as often or as seldom as it makes sense in the moment.
The only thing I’ll promise is the only thing you really care about: I won’t send you a bunch of garbage.
PS I’ve got a really ornery throat cold right now, the kind that sits in your esophagus and just burns and phlegms like it’s got nothing better to do. It started on Monday, which is perhaps not coincidentally the day the demon that lives in my head got really loud about how annoying it was to watch me play THE FLOOR IS LAVA! instead of getting off the damn furniture and publishing something.
Should I publish this, even? Would it immediately break my one promise?
Maybe. But in the hopes that it somehow drives this terrible sore throat away (I think the demon gave it to me), I’m willing to make that compromise.
No no no. It’s not garbage. There’s a point in here, somewhere, beyond the personal psychological value of publicly giving myself permission to do something literally no one told me I couldn’t do in the first place.
The point is this
People expect less of you than you think. The demon, like that poll I’m not running, fails to represent the actual thoughts and feelings of all the people he is warning you not to disappoint.
My personal demon doesn’t speak for you, and your personal demon doesn’t speak for me, or anyone else. Those buggers always and only speak for themselves. Their job is to remind you that you’re not very good at things, but if we’re smart, we’ll wake up and say, “Right, okay, so what?”
So, in an effort to wake up, I’m gonna go ahead and hit publish.
And maybe if you’ve been breaking brain furniture in an ugly dance with your own little head demon that’s kept you paralyzed from doing actual things in the actual world, this rambling missive of mixed metaphors will help you wake up, too.
I would much rather read something you actually cared about, whatever the frequency may be. Holding yourself to a publishing schedule will lead to work being rushed in order to have something to release. Quality over quantity.
I have found my twin and it is J.E. Petersen! I feel the same