making amends.

I’m a paying subscriber to Miranda July’s substack - one of two substack subscriptions I actually read - and this morning I read a post in which she apologizes for not posting and sharing consistently. It was a response to one subscriber respectfully complaining about not getting their money’s worth. It made me think of you guys and the fact that I haven’t shared ANYTHING with you in like a hundred years! Despite the fact that a lot of you are paying a monthly amount to read my stuff. Some of you even committed to paying a full year upfront. So much trust in me, oooph…

I am grateful, but also very surprised that not a single person has actually unsubscribed. But maybe this is owed more to my audience’s ability to forget about the odd recurring $6 than to an unconditional eternal devotion to me. Either way, I want to explain:

I still love writing. Writing, just like dancing, is my ally in life, and just like dancing it’s a necessity. And just like dancing, I abandon writing way too often and too easily for quicker dopamine fixes. More instant hits of rushes that temporarily soothe that tension in me. I know that you too are familiar with that tension. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here with me.

I’ve had a bit of a rough time for the past one and a half years. To put it mildly haha. I just didn’t have it in me to write insightful, witty, sexy, smart, intelligent, capable pieces of longer form that inspire or stimulate or even just entertain. Or in some other way make me look cool and okay. I wasn’t cool and I wasn’t okay. (I am now, likely more so than before, which is why I feel chill about sharing this with you lol).

And I didn’t stop writing altogether. I have been writing into the notes app of my phone a lot. A lot of short blurbs, lines, micro stories and vignettes, a format that has been really fun and that I have shared with my small private IG audience. Some of it I would have posted on twitter - back when twitter was still twitter - both in name and in vibe. But that space bores me now. Like, it reverse-excites me. Creating sentences and word combinations to connect to algorithms as opposed to bodies minds souls is like the most unsexy thing. What’s the opposite of horny because it’s that for me.

But, if I’m totally honest, and that’s the whole point with writing - otherwise why bother - I have actually been really confused about what to write about and how. I feel torn between what I want and need to write about vs. what I think is expected of me from an audience that largely comes from a pool of men that follows me to find phantasy, escape and stimulation. And I get that. That yearning for phantasy. I am like that too, or have been anyway. But I’m not that much into phantasy anymore. Not emotional phantasy anyway. I find truth and reality much more thrilling, despite, or maybe because of it’s complicated complexity. Writing from only one agreeable part of me and leaving the rest outside of the room is starting to feel boring and small, and quite frankly, a little patronising to my audience and their own complicated complexities.

So I will experiment with changing things up a bit. Upping the ante. I will loose some of you. That’s okay. You will pivot and find people more aligned with what you’re looking for. For those of you that stay, yay, I’m excited! A little nervous too, sure, but ultimately I’m a fuck it, let’s try kinda girl.

So fuck it. Let’s try!

X

p.s. I am also building something specifically just for us girls. So stay tuned, and if you have a minute, it would be super helpful if you sent a quick note from your preferred email to chitchatdeath@gmail.com to let me know that you’re there and would like to be informed and included once I’m ready with the girls-only-thing :)

pp.s. I can’t hand you a peace pipe, so please accept this little video instead…..