#45 | Against advice
Tri-purpose blog ~ Codified life exhaust ~ Firing flares ~ Slice of life
Random hodgepodge of thoughts this morning. More observations about Substack after being here for ~10 days now: people write long essays. I usually zonk out around ~500-700 words but I admire people able to read more. Likely my advanced age, but the majority I’ve read are a bit too self-indulgent and verbose for me.1 That said, I’m personally still figuring out how I’m going to use Substack myself and have settled on essentially treating it as a blog where each entry makes a single point. I also enjoy this format because I can easily provide links to future people I meet so they can instantly see my specific opinion on a specific position, crystalized into a single concrete and concise artifact. Again, I personally see blogging as triple-purpose: 1) figure out what I personally think/feel about something; 2) a way to help my people find me2; 3) chronicle my life journey on this small blue planet. Blogs are, IMHO, the best way for people to get to know another asynchronously. I don’t really care about subscribers and have made every attempt the hide the dumb “Subscribe” button wherever I can find it. I also never push my posts via email and actually often edit my posts (many times!) after publishing so that’d never work anyway. Substack Notes has basically replaced my daily social media usage now (which used to be Bluesky); very much loving the thoughtful people and community here in Notes. Also, the Substack editor is nice; I really enjoy writing in it.
Against advice
My random thought this morning is after reading tons of Substack in recent days, I’ve come to remember just how much I dislike reading advice. Every exhortation of “you should X!!” or “do Y for Z results!” annoys me and makes me instantly suspicious. Sure, there might be generally good tips but I just feel people’s lives are unique and largely so different that advice isn’t really all that useful and can actually be harmful. People change. What season of life are you in? North stars change. Circumstances change. So forth.
Thus, for anyone reading this, know I am never dispensing advice. Rather, I’m much more drawn to reading about people’s specific life experiences (memoirs) and seeing their thought process in that particular moment. What were they up against? What pieces on the board did they have? How’d they figure it out (or didn’t) with what they had at that specific point in time? Again, like many others, I often don’t know what I think or feel about something until I write about it. Thus, all my posts basically serve as a kind of codified life exhaust3. I try different things, experiment, and iterate quickly. I’m the kind of person who, when I check into a hotel for a few nights’ stay, will walk around all the different streets and back alleys that first night just to see what’s around. Defy Google Maps! What’s the fastest distance? The shortest? I’ll call a friend on a random weekend, just to use that time to walk around a new town or city.
Slice of life
In this vein, I’ve decided to use Substack to chronicle my daily life. Random observations, the occasional book or movie review, really— just whatever comes to mind any particular day. I’m not generally a nostalgic person but the other night, I found myself just randomly scrolling through my old Google Photos. Seeing the different places I’ve been. Different people who’ve come and gone. Random photos from college and various road trips. I hope this Substack can be something like that, but just publicly visible— a chronicle of who I was and what I was thinking as I moved my way through this world. No grand unifying theories. No outrage or umbrage. No trauma or personal baggage I’m looking to unload, share, or commiserate with others over. Rather, just a journal of my life. 📝
Again, attempts on both X and Bluesky have previously failed me so maybe this time will go better. Hope springs eternal!!
Hat tip to swyx’s 2018 “learning exhaust” idea.