on cultivating a rich inner world

a newsletter I wrote six months ago and never sent

NOTE: I wrote this newsletter in the summer of last year and never published it, which is ironic because of the content. Originally, I only shared it with my writing group in a practice we call “close friends substack” lol. After reading it I think all of my thoughts still stand. (Although, I must confess none of them feel quite original.) So this is me saying “f it we ball” and sharing it six months later. Enjoy!

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When I first started writing on Substack, I was driven by my need for consistency. Every week, I wrote and published a newsletter, without question. The goal wasn’t necessarily for each newsletter to be “good.” The frequency  at which I was writing and publishing newsletters is what felt like success for me. 

Last week, after I published my newsletter, I texted the writing group group chat saying, “now it’s time to not post again for the next six months!” A joke, but it was rooted in reality for me. 

For the past few years (I honestly, couldn’t tell you when this started), I began to view frequency as less of a marker of success. I am not the kind of person who writes every day, or even every week. [Present day me: I’m trying to change that!] Sometimes I’ll work on a story very intensely for a week and then the next week I don’t write anything at all. It feels necessary, sometimes, to come up for air. When I’m not writing, I’m still usually thinking about the story, the characters. I’m learning new things about them. Gathering information. And when I feel compelled to, I return to the draft and add a little more, take a little more away. 

What feels successful for me right now, in writing, is working on something long term. Working towards something. This is not a new take, but posting on Substack can feel like posting a selfie on social media. It’s the same instant gratification. I don’t necessarily even think that’s a bad thing. (Recently I’ve been on my Pleasure Activism shit, and I no longer believe in “guilty” pleasures.) But I do think regularly publishing your work and having access to people’s opinions on your work in the way that Substack allows, is a very specific way to measure success. There are benefits, of course, to just writing and publishing and then moving on to the next thing. I think it can make you less precious. It can help you move through perfectionism and imposter syndrome. 

But also – and maybe this is my Scorpio Venus talking – there is something really sexy to me about working on a project that only a few people really know about. To reference “this story that I’m working on” in casual conversation is like mentioning “this person that I’m seeing.” I’ve had a lot of fun engaging with different stories, seeing how much I’m interested in the themes and the characters. And not feeling the pressure to expose them to the world right away in the way that I would with a Substack post. 

“Berlin Windows #6” by Zoey Frank

To step away from writing for a bit, I have sort of shifted towards cultivating a kind of rich, but quiet world for myself in general as of late. Once again, I can’t really pinpoint when this shift happened, but I’d imagine it probably happened around the same time I started thinking about writing differently. 

I was an early adopter of internet culture. In middle school and high school I was an avid watcher of YouTube, and even made my own videos for a time. Like (probably) many of you, I learned most of what I know about the world outside of the suburb I grew up in on Tumblr. For a long, long time I posted on Instagram multiple times a week. I have always had a love/hate relationship with the internet and social media– something I’ll probably write about at length some day. A part of me feels like I would not be the person I am today without social media. I love all of the ways in which social media has connected me to people I would have otherwise never met. The jobs I’ve gotten because of it (for those who didn’t know, I work in social media.) In the current moment, I love how much I learn through social media, and how it brings people together around global movements and community organizing. 

There is a part of me that really thrives on social media. But there is also a part of me that is very private. Who likes having a small circle. Who wants people to think, Remember that girl Celeste? She lowkey fell off. I have always vacillated between wanting to tell my life story and wanting to move in silence. (Gemini moon.) And right now, I’m really leaning into cultivating a rich inner world, as opposed to performing on social media. Once again, that’s not a value judgement. Sometimes I wonder if I’m denying myself the very normal, very human need for selfie-induced serotonin. But what feels more important to me right now, rather than knowing that other people think I’m hot and cool, is making sure I like myself. Most of that work is done in therapy, in long, circular conversations with friends, in my journal. It’s not very brat summer of me. [lol!!!!] But it does feel kind of sexy in a sort of, if you know, you know, kind of way. 

I guess the connection I’m trying to make is that there are so many different ways to be a person and also a writer. And I don’t think that publishing regularly on Substack is diametrically opposed to having projects that you work on long term. As is having a rich inner world and doing it for the gram. We contain multitudes, etc. I think I’m mostly trying to remind myself of that more than anything. 

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Shout out to Anissa Amalia for making my new logo and banner(s)!! Tbh the whole reason I’m resurrecting this post was to show them off hehe. Until next time!