A nu start

I guess if you’re going to be “serious about writing” this year (as I’ve told myself I will), there’s no better time to start than New Year’s Day, fresh starts and what have you.

Every time I get excited about a new writing project I end up with a post about how, “this time it will be different,” (oh, the lies we tell ourselves) thinking that at last I’ve found the write platform to hold my inspiration and ideas. And as you might guess, every time I crash and burn, in varying degrees of embarrassment.

I don’t know if this time will be different, but I do know a few things. 1) I am exhausted by the sameness of social media. Everything sounds the same: the same topics, the same voice, same, same, same. 2) Trying to keep my creative work and professional work separate is exhausting and pointless. 3) I am at my best when I’m diligently thinking and writing and it sucks to be giving ALL of that energy to corporate America.

I’m not the only one fed up with social media—every trend report says we’re aching for analog, and even on social media platforms people are bemoaning being there (I’ve whittled it down to Instagram and Substack, maybe people are bitching less, elsewhere). But the complaining about social media on social media is as boring as every other trending topic. My algo sounds like, “here’s how I’m leaving my phone behind in 2026,” and “here’s how to reset your nervous system without technology,” on and on forever, with no real solutions but plenty to buy.

After decades of dutifully chewing and swallowing whatever the algo had in store for me, I’ve started to feel shakiness in the certainty of what I actually desire. Do I want to read book x, or try skin product y, or hobby z or did the omniscient algorithm simply see, “progressive female, early-40s, USA” and start showing me what it thinks I ought to see or do based on what I bought last?

Beyond the algorithm proving out how shallow my internal landscape has become, there’s the overwhelming issue of adding to the echo of sameness. When I spend time scrolling through Substack or Medium, my writing voice invariably starts to take on the patterns and tones of what I’m reading (which has WAY too much “written by AI” rhythm for my liking). It’s part autistic pattern recognition, part decades of professional writing that makes me take on the voice of whatever brand I’m working on, so it’s sort of unavoidable. The same happens on Insta (and TikTok, before it got weird). If I try to record a video in the talk directly to camera kind of way, I end up speaking in this stilted, disaffected way that doesn’t sound like me.

To be completely transparent about my own (massive) ego and narcissism, I don’t want to sound like anyone else, and I don’t want my creative energy to get sucked up into a scroll and forget, consume for the sake of consuming digital playground. The idea of being perceived as simply a thing to be swiped past, or skimmed and forgotten pricks a part of my shadow that I’m running from. The solipsistic energy of the spaces I resist is ironically the thing I want to tap into most (LISTEN TO ME! THINK ABOUT WHAT I HAVE TO SAY! Christ, it’s unbearable to confront, but what’s the point if we can’t face our own ugliness head on?)

I should acknowledge my own hypocrisy. If you know me in real life, you’ll for sure see me sharing my work through social media (but it won’t LIVE there). As ever, I like to think of myself above the game while playing along the whole time. How can you be contrarian if you’re not even a shadow on a wall? Some real Platonic bullshit I’m on these days.

It feels like the right time to bring myself together. I’m trying to combine my fascinations in another creative undertaking, and bringing that fusion to more places seems like good scaffolding for anything I’m trying to build. My best professional work has always been anchored in the ways I see and experience the broader world, but too often I try to put on the mask of professional business lady in ways that sound corporate and phony (my Achille’s heel for years). It works until it doesn’t. And my work-from-home, perimenopausal existence has really pushed me into “it doesn’t.” Too, my creative work gets a boost from the dot connecting, clarity seeking and big picture thinking that rule my professional life.

But it’s far more than the merging of professional and personal that’s important to me. It’s the desire to have a container for capturing the whole of my experience. As open and free as I like to think I am, there’s a rigidness to my thinking that has always kept my writing confined based on platform. A writing project had to be scoped to one big idea (I also think that’s a capitalism thing—find a niche market and own it). But I don’t want to do that. I wanna be able to write personal essays like this, share my outfits, talk about art and corporate strategy, deep dive on whatever strange subject has captured my attention for a week or two, and who knows what else.

Could I do that somewhere else? Sure. Maybe. But the effort it takes me mentally to get loose and open steals from the energy I want to devote to actually creating, so why not acknowledge that and find a solution?

I’m so completely turned on when I am writing about the things I’m thinking about (which, beautifully, inspires more thinking). A few months ago, I went to the retirement lecture of a favorite professor and it was so exciting and inspiring to hear deep thinkers from different disciplines wrestle with his ideas. That same night, I saw old friends, poets, musicians, and artists all come together to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a cultural landmark. It woke me up. That day reshaped how I saw the world. Or maybe, more clearly, it reoriented me to the things that have always held the deepest value. It made me want to really write again.

So here we are. I’m excited. Maybe you will be too. See ya whenever.