Is Substack making me lonely?
Probably not.
Thank you for reading. Substack creates a framework of performance indicators for writers. The key indicator is annual subscription revenue. For the business, this is smart because it rolls up subscriber numbers. It also aligns (so they assume) the individual writer’s goals with the goals of the business.
Substack is not a business for me. It is an agreement between you and I. I write, you read. I stay here, you leave when you want to. The only promise I want from my readers is that you will not let these posts become your spam. I do not monitor unsubscriptions. If you do unsubscribe, I will not notice, at least not right away. When I do, I will silently thank you for keeping your promise.
I have also asked you to cancel your paid subscriptions because of Substack’s aggressive recruitment (offering bonus money, throwing lavish parties, etc) of anti-social polemicists who attract legions of paid subscribers whom they encourage to stay lost in ignorance, ill-will, and greed. These miscreant “writers” feed on creating division and hatred.
I find it nauseating to contribute to the revenue stream for this. If you want to support me as a writer, buy me a coffee. You can make that recurring like a paid subscription on Substack, it even uses the same financial technology back-end. As far as I can tell, you won’t be financing bonuses and parties for looksmaxing misogynists and fascist liars.
I just spoke to a dear friend on the phone the other day. I ironically wasn’t calling her because I was ashamed of how long it had been since I did. She reminded me that she had not called me either, and then she added “I read your Substack, I feel like I know what’s going on with you.”
Am I unintentionally undermining myself? Does Substack aggravate my loneliness? I think hospice care may have. I became intimately close with many dozens of hospice patients right before their deaths. The emotional currency I spent in those relationships was not spent in other ways. I didn’t push the living away, but I did focus on people who died soon after we witnessed each other as people (as friends do).
I also moved, permanently, away from where I was raised. I was born in Dallas, I spent the ages of 18-39 in Austin, which were very formative years. The Austin I lived in is really no longer there, and those changes meant most of my friends in Austin left, just as I did. Dallas is associated with my painful and difficult childhood. I don’t like being there today.
I moved to New York City in 1999 to bring an online relationship to real life. I experienced the first of my serial failures to connect in person with people I met online soon after I arrived, but I loved New York City with such abandon that I remain grateful for being lured here. New York City means to me what Dallas doesn’t. This is my tribe. I am at home in this area. I also like New Jersey, and I thrived in Massachusetts (despite my misadventure there).
Making friends in New York City is both easy and difficult. It is easy because there are huge numbers of quality people here. It is difficult because the density of the population makes it impossible to be open to meeting everyone you see. New Yorkers have habits which grant one another respectful personal distance by default. Deciding when to reach across those respectful boundaries to be open to seeing and being seen by another is risky and uncertain. It requires a significant amount of emotional security to take these risks.
Those who are uncomfortable with rejection can easily spiral into heartbreaking loneliness here. It is truly stunning to feel unseen and unappreciated in the midst of hundreds of thousands of people in plain sight. There are more people on the upper west side of Manhattan than in all of New Mexico.
Being comfortable with rejection is emotional three-dimensional chess. Chasing preferences and running from aversions doesn’t work as a strategy. One needs to be satisfied with solitude. One needs to understand the role of views and delusions in perception, both one’s own and in others.
My most recent rejection was delivered in the midst of intensive study of The Heart Sutra. This was auspicious timing. The very reminders I needed to stay emotionally sane and preserve wholeheartedness were right there on the page before me.
O Shariputra, all dharmas are marked with Emptiness;
They do not appear nor disappear,
Are not tainted nor pure,
Do not increase nor decrease.
Therefore in Emptiness, no form,
No sensations, no conceptions, no inclinations, no perception;
No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind;
No color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind;
This stanza has very many layers of meaning and I do not pretend to know them all, but the message for me was that I created the suffering to begin with, and so it will have an end.
Thank you for reading this. For those of you who use Richard’s Rants as a way to stay in touch with me, thank you even more. It is an honor to matter that much to you, it truly is.
I will be writing about my loneliness. I have been hiding it from myself for many years. There are three layers of connections one needs--the personal, the familiar, and the impersonal. One should cultivate partnerships, one should cultivate connections to the people locally around them, and one needs to identify with a larger group, like Jazz fans, nurses, or Catholics. Those with connections an all these levels have the tools to face the impermanence of existence.
I am good with the latter two--the local and the impersonal. I have been deeply, deeply fearful of rejection in the former group--the intimate partnerships. I probably have had many more opportunities to form partnerships than I realize, and I realize I have had quite a few. There are many reasons for my failure to launch (so far) in this way, and I certainly don’t understand them all. I have been in denial about this until my most recent mishap made it impossible to miss.
If that sounds uninteresting to you, be ready to unsubscribe. I have no idea what I am going to write, or in what context, but I will be writing about fear of intimate rejection. This is what I have lost touch with in myself, and I want to find it. Writing has always led me back to myself.
Thanks for reading. I mean it.