The "waste book" concept reminds me of the idea of keeping a "compost document" of writing scraps I saw literally yesterday: https://www.instagram.com/p/C6xsrfLuoq1
oh I really needed this thinking re: coherence after struggling with an essay almost all day, so thank you for sharing it... something in the form of essays themselves is feeling off to me lately. Maybe it's the saturation or hyper-coherence of the writing here on Substack? I don't know. (Side wondering: have you read Open Book in Ways of Water? (Maybe I learned about it from you?) I'm going back to it this week, because it resists/refuses typical order and coherence in a beautiful way.) & deep respect for starting everything from seed! I can't even handle waiting for the zinnias I seeded a couple weeks ago. Every day I'm out there with my nose a few inches from the ground checking progress, lol
I haven't read that, I'll check it out!! I often feel trapped by the essay and long for poems instead tbh
I also sowed a bunch of zinnias like a month ago and only a few of them came up 🥲 i'm not having great luck with surface sowing this year, but it's possible I just got my seasonal timing wrong and they didn't get enough spring rain
I love this grab bag of topics!! The gayborhood BIDs video was so thought provoking, and the scar tissue massage SO helpful and way more detailed than any other scar care article or video I've come across.
What a lovely idea. I'm excited to read things where you haven't focused on coherency. I get really stuck on that too - sometimes I send my posts out a whole month later than I finished them because they never feel coherent enough, and then eventually I realize it's been long enough it just needs to get out there, lol. I think neurodivergence is very related for me. I worry a lot about being misunderstood. I've been trying to practice accepting people will inherently misunderstand me. It's rough!
I do that aaaalll the time!! so many half-finished essays stuck in the drafts. they say that's just how writing goes though -- what actually gets published is just the tip of a giant draft iceberg. i do think misunderstanding is kinda inevitable in communication, which is scary, but on the flipside, also part of the beauty of writing -- that it can be interpreted in so many ways
Re: That 2001 WSJ quote, is that... Sinophobia? Maybe I'm reading way too much into it but I feel like it's evoking the autistic-coded freak who can't communicate with the good old-fashioned American next door and it does mention China by name. Way before TikTok. Is part of the dopamine panic that we're not good patriots if we're experiencing "intense intimacy" with foreigners on a daily basis?
idk if it is intentionally, but I do think there's a strong nationalistic thread running through a lot of dopamine discourse -- esp in the idea that our indulgence in pleasures is 'degenerating' us as a nation. the conservative panic about TikTok being 'digital fentanyl from china' preying on American kids is a good example!
I brought this up to my Spanish tutor in Mexico, who's in her mid 20s and lives in the house she grew up in with her family of origin. She's always been introverted and doesn't fit in well with the neighbors, and she said they took it badly when they found out that she took an online job talking to foreigners for a living––like, "Does she think she's too good for us? She'll talk to them but not to us?" Obviously the power dynamics are different there but I think there is something about the internet that threatens national identity.
As I was writing that, I remembered being a kid in the 90s/00s and having parents express consternation at the popularity of Japanese anime, manga, and games, which of course partially spread online. But I also take your point that even when it isn't about contact with foreign cultures, there's a fear of national degeneracy through technology. (Surely that predates the internet? Were there people lamenting how cars and industrial machinery were weakening the physical strength of American men? I know people thought TV was making us dumber and lazier lol.)
I feel like that also links to the panic about younger people not having sex as much:
Young people are online reading gay erotica by Chinese writers all day and therefore aren't interested in meeting up with one another to have sex so they're not having babies so America is going to fall as an empire.
The "waste book" concept reminds me of the idea of keeping a "compost document" of writing scraps I saw literally yesterday: https://www.instagram.com/p/C6xsrfLuoq1
Fertile for the soil, fertile for the mind.
oh I really needed this thinking re: coherence after struggling with an essay almost all day, so thank you for sharing it... something in the form of essays themselves is feeling off to me lately. Maybe it's the saturation or hyper-coherence of the writing here on Substack? I don't know. (Side wondering: have you read Open Book in Ways of Water? (Maybe I learned about it from you?) I'm going back to it this week, because it resists/refuses typical order and coherence in a beautiful way.) & deep respect for starting everything from seed! I can't even handle waiting for the zinnias I seeded a couple weeks ago. Every day I'm out there with my nose a few inches from the ground checking progress, lol
I haven't read that, I'll check it out!! I often feel trapped by the essay and long for poems instead tbh
I also sowed a bunch of zinnias like a month ago and only a few of them came up 🥲 i'm not having great luck with surface sowing this year, but it's possible I just got my seasonal timing wrong and they didn't get enough spring rain
I love this grab bag of topics!! The gayborhood BIDs video was so thought provoking, and the scar tissue massage SO helpful and way more detailed than any other scar care article or video I've come across.
also I feel this bit re: gardening so hard: (Look, mom, planning my life a year ahead! I want to live!)
ONLY BADDERS ROUND ME └|∵|┐♪♪┌|∵|┘♪
What a lovely idea. I'm excited to read things where you haven't focused on coherency. I get really stuck on that too - sometimes I send my posts out a whole month later than I finished them because they never feel coherent enough, and then eventually I realize it's been long enough it just needs to get out there, lol. I think neurodivergence is very related for me. I worry a lot about being misunderstood. I've been trying to practice accepting people will inherently misunderstand me. It's rough!
I do that aaaalll the time!! so many half-finished essays stuck in the drafts. they say that's just how writing goes though -- what actually gets published is just the tip of a giant draft iceberg. i do think misunderstanding is kinda inevitable in communication, which is scary, but on the flipside, also part of the beauty of writing -- that it can be interpreted in so many ways
Re: That 2001 WSJ quote, is that... Sinophobia? Maybe I'm reading way too much into it but I feel like it's evoking the autistic-coded freak who can't communicate with the good old-fashioned American next door and it does mention China by name. Way before TikTok. Is part of the dopamine panic that we're not good patriots if we're experiencing "intense intimacy" with foreigners on a daily basis?
idk if it is intentionally, but I do think there's a strong nationalistic thread running through a lot of dopamine discourse -- esp in the idea that our indulgence in pleasures is 'degenerating' us as a nation. the conservative panic about TikTok being 'digital fentanyl from china' preying on American kids is a good example!
I brought this up to my Spanish tutor in Mexico, who's in her mid 20s and lives in the house she grew up in with her family of origin. She's always been introverted and doesn't fit in well with the neighbors, and she said they took it badly when they found out that she took an online job talking to foreigners for a living––like, "Does she think she's too good for us? She'll talk to them but not to us?" Obviously the power dynamics are different there but I think there is something about the internet that threatens national identity.
As I was writing that, I remembered being a kid in the 90s/00s and having parents express consternation at the popularity of Japanese anime, manga, and games, which of course partially spread online. But I also take your point that even when it isn't about contact with foreign cultures, there's a fear of national degeneracy through technology. (Surely that predates the internet? Were there people lamenting how cars and industrial machinery were weakening the physical strength of American men? I know people thought TV was making us dumber and lazier lol.)
I feel like that also links to the panic about younger people not having sex as much:
Young people are online reading gay erotica by Chinese writers all day and therefore aren't interested in meeting up with one another to have sex so they're not having babies so America is going to fall as an empire.