Hey Bloomers,
I’m quite excited to be starting my substack. Welcome. I have a few substacks that I currently subscribe to and they have inspired me to jump into the waves. (Namely, Noahpinion, Slow Boring, Darrell Owens, Freddie Deboer; you decide what that list says about me and if you care.)
I want to spend the majority of this first posting setting some expectations for myself. Writing often feels hard for me. The act itself seems to erect blocks all along my mental pathways. Give me a chance to speak my thoughts outloud, or a guitar to strum along to my internal monologue with, and all is fine good and dandy. But tell me to put pen to paper (or I guess fingers to keys in this case) and the spigot magically turns off.
Recently I’ve been writing my graduate school application essays, and, against Ronnie’s best advice, I haven’t been able to help but stop at the end of every sentence. Writing and re-writing until everything seems perfect. I think it’s the ability to see what I’ve just said that slows me down. It makes me feel self-conscious when I should be simply following the muse. As such, my goal with this substack is to just write. To find rythym in the sound of fingers and keys. I want to get lost and I want to know this elusive “flow state” I’ve heard sooooo much about.
Of course, I will still be editing when I get to the end. But I am here searching for the joy and jazz of writing.
As for content, hopefully it will be a fun mix! I tend to silo when I get into a project, but I’m hoping writing opens up new processes and habits for me. Just in case, I will say it here for a bit of accountability: I want this substack to be a place where I post links, give life updates, try out poems, maybe just process my day. I’m excited about the journey. I don’t really care if anyone ever sees or reads this, I simply would like the structure to excite and challenge me.
I could say a lore more, but for now, let’s hit the road :)
Josh
And while we’re waiting for my first real go at it, here are three fun links to content that I’ve enjoying reading and playing with recently:
Two Not Touch is an immensley addicting and fun game. I started off playing it in the NYT every morning while visiting my parents. Then they cancelled their print subscription and moved to digital, and my puzzling moved online as well. Can’t recommend enough.
Get Back, the new Beatles documentary. Streaming services frustrate the shit out of me but I cannot recommend enough sucking it up and signing up for a month of Disney+. The film (the first of three parts) is an amazing inside look at life in a rock ‘n’ roll band, let alone one of the most famous and greatest bands of all time, and at an especially interesting and fabled period in their career to top it all off.
As someone with experience in bands, so many of the moments and dynamics were intimately familiar to me - although nothing that comes out of my mouth every sounds even an inch as good as what viewers get to what erupt from Paul McCartney’s while writing Get Back one morning during rehearsals. And at the end I felt a little more connected to a set of songs that I’ve loved all my life - who could ask for more?? (Who would’ve guessed that my first post would have a link to buy something from Disney, haha)
Last but not least, read anything you (link, link, link, link, link, link) the Green Steel Deal. The Biden administration and politics may be a confusing mess right now, but this is some seriously good stuff happening on the climate front. A brilliant way to align union and climate interests, all while working against the Chinese Gov’ts global steel/aluminum dumping and dirty steel production.