starting is the hardest part
Starting is the hardest part
It should be easy, starting this. I have no subscribers; there are no expectations. This is a simple exercise — write a post, post it, see how it looks, then write the next post next week. And maybe get some subscribers sometime.
But the stories I want to tell here are both too big and too small to wrap my head around. I am on the verge of some Big Life Changes (tm), the kind that lend themselves to a certain type of memoir — the one with a woman, just turned forty and staring down a life she no longer wants, blowing up everything and seeking new kinds of community and new creative experiences.
That’s not the story I want to tell, though (and I’m certainly not hiking anywhere to do it!). Or, at least, that’s not all of the story.
In another version of the story about my Big Life Changes (tm), it’s something closer to sociopolitical commentary. No one knows it yet (especially not my nonexistent subscribers), but I’m about to trade in my city life for a very rural one, and also my tech career for a return to my creative dreams. Since my teens, my life has been defined by the gulf (or rather, mountain range) between rural America and coastal-elite America. I’ve never been able to unify the two — never been able to fully voice the strange, decaying magic of Iowa to my city friends, or the ever-changing glamor of San Francisco to my rural relatives.
But this is less sociopolitical and more personal. I’ll probably share articles and books that get at the sociopolitical dynamics at play in the US, but I’m not always going to have a pithy thesis or well-researched commentary. Sometimes I just want to tell you a ridiculous story of something that happened, and leave it to you to decide what, if anything, it means.
All of this is to say — I’m finding my way as I go. That’s how Big Life Changes (tm) usually work. Hopefully whatever I find is interesting, or illuminating, or encouraging. Hopefully the vibes are good (even if good vibes feel almost naïve in the throes of late stage capitalism and covid wave #5329). Hopefully I can share some stories that give you something fun to read, and maybe bridge the gulf/mountain between this increasingly impossible rural/urban divide.
We’ll see where this newsletter goes. If you’re visiting from the future, after subscribing and then reading all the way back through the archive to this very first baby post, thank you for finding the start of this journey! I hope I’m living up to the intentions I have right now for my Big Life Changes (tm) and how I’m sharing them with you.