After almost a week of no online forums, the thing that I miss most is the unrestrained form. Just read randomly and write whatever you want. Holding out for serendipity. Yet that’s the exact recipe for addiction, variable reward! Anyway, you can still write whatever you want on a site, no? It’s just the whole publishing process makes it feel planned, and therefore sloppy if not reigned in.
So instead you write with intention, which makes a lot more sense, but kills too. You can pour a lot of energy into disarray without intention, but at least there was something to pour. There are many posts I’ve written in length now meaningless because it wasn’t integrated into anything. Now it’s a struggle to write, for I constantly refine it, formalize it, pull a rigid form, choose the correct entry point, topic name, flow, paragraph grouping, etc: what is the purpose of this?
I don’t have to worry about keeping anyone’s attention because I’m not trying to gain anything from it or trying to change the world (just yet ;.) ). Sometimes it feels self-indulgent and sloppy to write as is, but that’s the whole point of the site. I’m not sure when I diverged off toward a rigid process. Why am I willingly putting on a muzzle again, censoring?
You could say it’s because I sincerely believe some things aren’t worth writing out. It certainly doesn’t do the reader any good, nor the author. Yet what you often run away from seems to come back at you double-fold. Maybe because it’s never been resolved, just sits in your mind. Not sure!
I don’t have all the answers. It seems my writing recently acts as if I do, but I don’t. I should put a disclaimer all over the whole site: warning, this isn’t a treatise.
It seems like, if you ever publish, there’s an unwritten rule of where you thought of it all.
I can see such expectations if, maybe, you’re following someone through substack and want to get continued value out of it. If you have a subscription. If you were sold expectations in your purchase.
But this is just an expression and I’m not going to sell out (just yet ;.) ).