Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Hey friends,
I sat down to write this newsletter and ended up writing a (nearly) complete article that I simply didn’t want to send. It was… fine. But it wasn’t a piece I felt lived up to what I want this newsletter to be, so I went back to the drawing board and decided to indulge in a bit of metawriting instead.
What was I trying to convey in the newsletter that wasn’t working?
I was exploring the idea of gatekeepers vs. influencers and how algorithmically reinforced capitalism has made everyone an influencer while stigmatizing gatekeepers, since the “democratization of access” is a philosophy that underpins how we think about digital interactions. The original thesis I wanted to capture was that the guarantee of having a platform isn’t a guarantee of being heard, and that, culturally, we benefit more from having tastemakers who act as gatekeepers than from having everyone be an influencer.
Reading the article, I think there were three major flaws in what I presented that weakened the thesis and caused the content to falter.
The content came across more as venting or cultural critique than something that I could meaningfully back up. It was 80% pathos, 10% logos, and 10% ethos, which is a fine ratio for rants with friends, but not for a piece of writing I want to put my name on and send into the ether.
Because the rhetorical underpinnings were fairly weak, I was contriving a piece that was ultimately hypocritical. I was making the argument that not everyone deserves to be treated with equal authority to everyone else, but doing nothing to speak with authority, meaning that my central argument would also suggest that you stop reading what I was writing.
The piece focused on the negative aspects of the cultural zeitgeist without offering anything substantive to help readers move beyond pessimistic critique. To put it another way, the way I structured the article functionally dragged you down into the mud with me and didn’t offer either of us a way out.
Were there any good parts of the abandoned article worth keeping or repurposing?
From the original draft, two things stand out in my mind. One is just a sequence of sentences I quite like– I don’t think I’ll do anything with it at this point, but it still amuses me. The other is a bit more profound and has more meat on the bone for me to chew on.
Here’s the passage I wrote that most amused me from the abandoned article.
Internet culture has allowed us to create multiple versions of ourselves that are almost entirely disconnected from who we are as analog beings. This often reaches a point where individuals experience a disconnect between who they are online and who they are offline, sometimes to the point of interpersonal depersonalization– big, boisterous online personalities have all the joie de vivre of wet cardboard and are incapable of looking up from their phones in person.
“But Blake, some people have anxiety and need their phone as an emotional support–”
Shut up.
And here’s the realization that I intend to spend some time meditating on and ultimately doing something with: I describe Non-Slop Fun on my homepage as “a weekly essay about reclaiming your attention and your creative life,” so any piece that doesn’t push us to collectively reclaim our attention and creativity is going to be a miss.
A Collaborative Creative Exercise
Armed with the realization that I was missing the mark in executing on my vision for the newsletter, I decided to take a step back and ask myself what the best version of myself and my newsletter looked like so that I have something to work backward from as I build.
I’m still figuring out exactly what the ideal looks like and how I want to convey it (and, candidly, expressing my ambitions is a rather uncomfortable act for me as well), but for the last several years, I’ve had this idea churning in the back of my mind of facilitating a community of readers, writers, and thinkers that bridges the online and analog spheres. I see it as part book club, part support group, part creative braintrust. Let’s not call it a cult. Let’s call it a community of like-minded people who value their humanity over the march of technology and capitalism.
Working backward from there, I’ve been spending some time combing through the currently available research on digital addiction, the phenomenon of doomscrolling and brain rot, and the impact of technology on attention spans and creativity.
Based on the research, it seems like there are a few agreed-upon best practices for reclaiming your attention and creativity:
Reading and engaging in deep work. Who knew?!
Digital detoxes/ intentionally disconnecting for a set period of time.
Decrease your proximity to mobile devices.
Time in nature.
Meditation and mindfulness practice.
Allowing yourself to be bored.
What I’m thinking I would like to do with this research is essentially compile an annotated reading list: novels, nonfiction, essays, and poetry that I think lend themselves well to developing the skills and mindset for taking our minds off of endless scroll mode and constant context switching, steering us toward curious focus and mindfulness. It won’t just be a list of books. It will also have my commentary and guiding questions for reflection. That annotated reading guide is something I want to offer all subscribers and put on the site as a lead-gen tool.
From there, I also think I want to try something new with the newsletter content, at least for a little while. Just as I started this piece with an analysis of my own writing, I want to do more textual analysis and criticism within this newsletter, taking what I’m actively reading and critically analyzing the what, why, and how of the text, particularly as it relates to curiosity, creativity, technology, and culture.
Here’s why I’ve titled this section A Collaborative Creative Exercise: I want you to help me workshop this idea, send in book suggestions that you think I should include on the writing list or on my personal list of titles to read and reflect on, and contribute your own essays.
That’s asking a lot in a single sentence, but I think it’s reasonable. You’re smart cookies. You subscribe to this newsletter, for god’s sake, which is a clear indication of intelligence!
But I mean it– I want to hear from you. Reply to this email, leave a comment on the web version, or head over to this page to send along an essay pitch. If you think you’re interested in contributing a guest essay but aren’t entirely sure what you would want to write, or whether it would align well enough with Non-Slop Fun, just message me using the form on that page! Let’s chat about it. I can help you refine, polish, and prepare.
To quote Socrates, “we’re all in this together and it shows when we stand hand-in-hand, make our dreams come true.”
Until next time,
Blake
Reflection is resistance