It has been a hard time to write. The cognitive dissonance of going about my daily life while millions of people live under siege is unbearable and yet it’s the least I can do. Bear it and bear witness. Endure the fear and worry.
I keep trying to find my way back here, but it’s difficult to write about other things. Of course, I am living my life, which is filled with pleasures and banalities unavailable to so many right now. I’m consuming both urgent and frivolous material, as I usually do. Living the dissonance is one thing, to write about it feels wrong. But I had a brief email exchange with a friend today, who made a few good points, including do we need another take? and that’s not what people come here for—I believe this and felt comforted by it, yet I am not convinced that any written offering immediately enters the hot take economy, and besides, I don’t think people come here for any one thing. She was full of humility about it, which I respect.
Related to these hesitations is my increasing inability to pretend that Substack is not social media. I really enjoy the newsletters to which I have subscribed, and I love writing here, but I need to put on blinders against the notes, the explore tab, and the constant prompts to download the app or upgrade my subscription, etcetera. I want this place to be like the blogs of days long gone.
The last few weeks have been pretty rough. I’ve been reluctant to use the word “burnout” to describe what I am experiencing, simply because I’m not sure it’s a good shorthand when you are both up and down. I keep telling everyone I feel discombobulated after meeting some huge work deadlines. That was the right word for awhile, because my orientation to my days changed drastically, and I had a whole new landscape of objects and responsibilities to reorder. But I have always had a lot on my plate and this is more akin to emotional and spiritual fatigue. More recently, I feel certain it’s something like a dark night of the soul. I understand that I can’t avoid traversing pain and fear, even as I see a clear stream ahead. A stream that I can recognize because it’s in me and I belong to it.
The news made me succumb to looking at Instagram and I got mired in that for a bit, which felt necessary, but it’s ultimately not a way I want to spend any more of my time. Even as I understand its potentially useful functions, its multi-layered capture of seemingly everything fills me with deep despair. If I find myself there, I am probably trying to meet a need for connection or trying to feel less alienated, and there are plenty of other ways to meet those needs. For example, these past few months I’ve resumed talking on the phone with friends frequently, and it is the best.
Over the past two weeks, discussing these feminist films, like Leila and the Wolves and Measures of Distance, has felt like a desperately needed relief valve. I have been buoyed by my students, by our discussions, by the care of so many people I see around me, by wishful images, and beautiful words.
Oblique, a measure of the distance between what ought to be and what is not, what I want to bare and cannot, this is my offering today. I’ll be back next week to talk about music and novels and sandwiches and shit.
Be good to each other.
Lots of love.
I related to deeply to everything you said here that it inspired my own Substack post this week. All beautifully said, as always.
This is really lovely, Sara, and I've had similar thoughts recently re substack as a form of social media. ❤️