Status update: after my move back to Iowa, Facebook is now showing me endless videos of cow hoof repairs.
I’ll admit, I’m grossly fascinated by them. I can’t handle the sight of blood, but pus is another matter — I can’t turn away from videos by Dr. Pimple Popper either. And these cow hoof videos are basically the bovine version of dermatology, with an added dash of brutality.
The videos are all the same: a close-up of a cow’s hoof held tightly in place, and a man somewhere off camera. The metal claw that holds the hoof also keeps the cow from kicking the man in the face, which probably isn’t a risk that Dr. Pimple Popper faces. The man uses knives, razor blades, and picks, plus a water hose for all the manure the cow has walked through, to carve off thick slices of hoof until he uncovers the infected wound deep within. Pus shoots out, expelling whatever piece of gravel had worked its way into the hoof and caused the infection. The man cleans and bandages the hoof, the cow trots off without kicking him, and I scroll to the next thing in my feed.
This little corner of the internet would have remained hidden to me if I hadn’t moved back to Iowa. I think the Facebook algorithm is as confused about my life choices as I am.
The algorithm weighs how my friend list is evenly split between rural dwellers and coastal elites, notes that I’ll watch a video on cow grooming and also click on an ad for pricey skin cream…and it seems to give up.
It’s constantly shoving things in my face, asking: do you want to get into crypto? Or buy some gold Krugerrands to bury in your backyard? How about a Hungryroot box delivered to your door? What about a supply of MREs that will stay edible for the next twenty-five years? A new monstera for your plant mama persona? Or this 1940s schematic for a victory garden that will feed your family for a year?
Since I doomscroll without clicking, the algorithm keeps devolving…
Have you considered buying a generator so you can survive the collapse of the power grid? Have you bought property in Portugal so you can get a golden visa? If you’re simply resigned to your fate, maybe buy this Saatva organic mattress so you can hurkle-durkle or bed rot or whatever the kids are calling it?
And mixed in with the ads are partisan posts, either from friends (“friends”) or boosted accounts…
Stock up on ivermectin before Fauci takes it away from you. Get a vaccine booster. Measles will kill you. Measles are a natural childhood disease. Contact your state rep and demand that they protect Iowa’s special education funding. Repost this if you want Jesus to cleanse our nation. Watch children dying in Gaza, witness another non-binary child who was bullied to death, see a tradwife baking cookies with her kids, and chase it all with a sexy BookTok-style video for the latest romantasy. Tell the government to keep their hands off your [gun / uterus].
And if these posts are causing you to self-diagnose your [anxiety / ADHD / perimenopause / seasonal depression], here’s some [therapy influencers / prayer warriors / hormone replacement / essential oils / psychedelics].
It’s all maddening.
Meanwhile, out in the world, the signals are just as confusing.
Direct mail doesn’t know what to sell to me either. I get Serena and Lily catalogs one day; free copies of The Epoch Times another.
I have casual conversations with friends, relatives, neighbors. I like talking to (almost) all of these people. But then they’ll say something I don’t expect: New York was fun to visit but they’re not going to be able to handle it when the power grid goes away. I heard Biden’s going to ban cash next year. I hate Taylor’s red lipstick. Delaware has produced nothing but corruption. And I feel my jaw clench, even though I’ve injected botox in it to keep it from giving me away.
I do argue the point sometimes. Other times, I let it go and dwell on it after. Either way, I’m left feeling uneasy — like I’ve glimpsed an alternate world through a funhouse mirror, and it feels impossible to reconcile the two.
When I started writing this newsletter a year ago, my purpose was to share a slice of small town life with people who might never experience it. I thought I could help bridge these urban/rural divides. And my ulterior motive was good ol’ marketing, just like Facebook’s algorithm. I wanted to find people who might buy my future books and then feed them content to keep them engaged.
But I no longer think that’s my purpose.
I think I’m writing these stories to understand, entirely for myself, why this specific place, this exact moment, these few hundred people in my hometown — and I — have reached such an insurmountable feeling of division and decay.
And then, if I understand it, I can help fix it.
Maybe that’s why I like the cow hoof repair videos. It seems so easy: scrape off the bullshit, dig deep, and you can extract the source of infection. It’s a fixable problem.
Fixing things often feels impossible in this wildly dark global moment. Right now, it mostly feels like we’re all getting kicked in the face.
I feel some fragile optimism, though. I have no data to back me up on this feeling. It’s an intuition based on how tired everyone is of the current world, and some hope that it will lead to positive change.
It’s also conviction that we need some against-all-odds optimism to start building a healthier society instead of succumbing to bed rotting.
And it’s because of that fragile optimism that I must say, to myself even more than to you: the book I’ve worked on for the last couple of years is probably dead.
I’ve known it was dying for awhile, although it’s taken me months to admit it. I don’t like sunk costs, and I don’t like “failure,” which is what unfinished books feel like.
I also feel ashamed (despite reading all of Brené Brown’s work on shame) that this is the second or fourth book that has “failed,” depending on how you’re counting. It feels extra painful and bewildering since I wrote seven novels with no real problems before hitting this massive dry spell.
It hasn’t been a waste, though. These “failed” projects are leading me somewhere — if I can give myself the grace to understand the lessons. I’m not good at giving myself grace; the person I judge the most is myself. But I keep practicing.
The book is dead for several reasons. But it was by writing this newsletter over the last few months that I realized two things:
1) I was writing a fantasy novel set in a dystopian future version of my hometown — but I no longer want to write a story that assumes our society will fail to meet our current challenges. I can’t nurture my fragile optimism and try to make a positive impact now, while also writing a dream of imminent collapse. I still like the idea of this book, and I may come back to it someday. But it doesn’t feel right anymore.
2) I started writing the ‘wrong’ book because I was too hung up on the fear that there’s no audience for what I really want to write. I’m still figuring out the structure of my new project, but it is much more deeply grounded in the present-day, in my hometown, in the Farm Crisis and all the ways this place has changed, and in the rural/urban divide.
But for a long time, I was convinced that people outside this local bubble weren’t interested in reading about flyover states and places best forgotten. I was equally convinced that people inside this bubble would hate a story told through the eyes of a prodigal daughter who has returned but is too changed to fit in.
Maybe it’s true that there isn’t an audience for what I want to write. Maybe I’ll be like Flaco the Owl, who escaped from the bubble of a zoo into the opposite bubble of Central Park, and was doomed to never find another owl like himself — to be alone in the world, and to die early outside the safety of a cage.
Or maybe I won’t even be like Flaco, who at least got a lot of press and could have sold his memoir for seven figures if he’d had the ability to write one.
(My optimism is very fragile, to be clear.)
But whether there’s an audience or not, whether I make money or starve…I have to write the dream that I want to live in.
I have to write what I see and feel in this specific part of the world: where my body feels rooted to a community that I no longer fully belong to but can’t look away from.
I’ll admit, I still feel the urge to sift through my life and tell only stories that will generate clicks. Some days I would happily go trim a cow’s hoof if it would grab more Substack subscribers.
But I’m not an algorithm, and I can’t write to one. I’m so so grateful for all of you who are reading this, but Substack’s engagement metrics can’t tell me whether this newsletter resonates and creates connections — or whether you’re reading it like you’d watch a trainwreck. Clicks and subscribers aren’t the right metrics to measure what can’t be measured: understanding, empathy, common ground.
For what it’s worth, I don’t intend to change much about this newsletter based on these realizations — although I may set up some (optional) ability to pay to support this work. And I’ll share more in some future post about the novel that I’m writing now.
But as I’m writing my way into an understanding of this place, this moment, our cultural bubbles, and any optimism I can find, I hope you’ll come with me — and I hope you’ll find something that resonates in the dream I’m trying to write into existence.
Even if, against all algorithmic advice, I’m writing it for me and not for you.
Cheers,
Sara
p.s. Since there are a ton of cultural references that may be obscure depending on which info bubble you’re in, here’s a brief guide:
Here’s a cow hoof video from Nate the Hoof guy.
Here’s Dr. Pimple Popper removing an 85-year-old blackhead.
Krugerrands are South African gold bullion coins that are popular with people hoarding gold against the “inevitable collapse” of US currency. Banned for importation to the US in 1985 due to apartheid sanctions, but unbanned in 1991.
Hungryroot: recipes + grocery delivery for all your millennial dietary restrictions.
MREs: “meals ready to eat.” You can get a 1-year supply of 2000 calories per day for $2700 from My Patriot Supply, if you feel so inclined. Can be stored up to 25 years!
Victory gardens: there are lots of videos about planting gardens in case the food supply system is disrupted when someone takes out the GPS satellites and the trucking industry disintegrates. But here’s an original 1940s booklet if you’re interested.
Golden visas: how to buy your way out of the US.
Hurkle-durkle and bed rot: two slang terms for staying in bed, closely associated with Gen Z burnout.
Ivermectin: yes, people are still promoting the horse-grade antibiotic as a cure-all, and not just as a good way to shit yourself whenever you desire.
Iowa’s special education funding: the governor is continuing her push to remove everything good in the world, and next up is Iowa’s relatively decent special education programs.
Tradwife content: I see more thought pieces about tradwives than I see actual tradwives. But if you want a thought piece, here’s The Cut. And if you want to see a trad wife’s social media profile, here’s Ballerina Farm baking and winning Mrs. American (not a typo) right after having her eighth kid.
Romantasy: a blend of fantasy and romance, often quite sexy. Recently popularized by Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses) and Rebecca Yarros (Fourth Wing)…but really just a repackaging of a genre that has been around forever and mostly ghettoized into women’s romance sections because fantasy was traditionally marketed towards men. See this WaPo article for more.
Serena and Lily: Coastal style for the coastal elite (this is not their tagline but maybe it should be).
The Epoch Times: a wild far-right “newspaper,” anti-communist and therefore pretty pervasive in Iowa despite being run as a psyop by the Falun Gong.
Brené Brown: the foremost researcher on shame, who had one of the top five most-viewed-ever TED talks and whose podcasts I’ve usually enjoyed.
Flaco the Owl: RIP, little dude.
p.p.s. If you haven’t subscribed yet, and this tour through the internet hasn’t scared you off, please sign up!
If JD Vance can turn Hillbilly Elegy into a bestseller (and major motion picture, no less), I'm certain the book you want to write will have an audience. Perhaps there's a crowdfunding experiment in this somewhere (sign me up).
I'm here and reading, and not in a trainwreck way! I find your posts fascinating. I'm English but now also American and I live in SF, so I know very little about more rural ways of life, and I want to because I'm also concerned about how divided we're becoming.
I'm reading Betsy Gaines Quammen's True West at the moment and it addresses some similar issues.
Good luck with finding the book inspiration you're looking for, and thank you for sharing these dispatches.