You've articulated this problem really well, Tsh. Thank you for raising this concern and offering such practical encouragement!
I have been concerned lately to see some Substack writers mention using Grammarly. I'm distressed by this, as I think it is detrimental to authentic communication, as well as to developing and maintaining the craft of writing. Certainly, the sense of "what is 'okay'" is shifting in writing, but I worry. We need to use our own words to communicate with one another when we're saying anything beyond mere information (and even then, I prefer our own words!). Writing and reading are so personal.
It worries me so much that I may be reading AI words instead of human ones, and not know the difference. This strikes me, in part, as "not practicing what we preach" -- interacting as if we are speaking to each other in our own voices, but some of those voices simply are not.
I'm interested to hear what others think about in-between AI like Grammarly, including from those who might disagree with me.
Thank you Tsh. I'm happy to share some thoughts, as a reader who does writing only for private purposes thus far. I have realized that I'm taking too much in - too many substacks, too much news, too many podcasts. And many of them are, as you say, providing some community/support for countercultural choices like not giving my tweens phones, believing in reading real books (even old ones!), etc.. All of this content, even good content, has started to overwhelm me. It feels literally a gluttony. I'm having to consciously scale back. This is also helped that so many substacks are costing $5-10/month (which is very reasonable for one or two or even three, but quickly adds up especially since I'm (counterculturally) working very little in order to focus on my family. I consciously pay for my local and national news sources as well. And my local paper directly supports dozens of people or more for the cost of supporting 3 substacks.)
I have found that the convergence of being overwhelmed and the cost is helping me to pare down how much I am consuming. I'm aware of leaving wonderful links unchecked, wonderful writers unread. Just as I haven't read every classic book, or every wonderful new release. A huge part of modern life is managing all of the things that, in themselves, are good and wonderful things. However, too much of a good thing ...
I purchased a year of your substack and I'm glad I did. It takes the decision out of the month-to-month and it was very affordable. I truly value your content. I do value other content as well that I don't subscribe to due to cost and volume but I'm feeling okay with that.
I remember reading that at one time furniture was designed to showcase your belongings because most people did not own many objects. Objects were crafted. Now furniture is designed to store or hide our objects. Objects are often cheap and people give or throw away items after very few uses and we complain that we have too much stuff. We are in an age in which so much of what we need to do is sift through all of this wonderful content, just as we sift through so many other wonderful things.
For Lent, I've tried to make space for silence. For folding clothes or going for a walk without a podcast. For sitting down without taking out my phone or iPad or sitting at a computer to read. I'm trying not to check the news as often. I love that Alan Jacobs says he reads the Economist every week for the news. That would be so amazing! (I'd have to check my local new though too.)
I really appreciate your authenticity in this arena. Taking these risks and sharing your struggles makes it much easier to relate to you and to trust your takes on things. Thank you for all you do.
As a 76 year old, handicapped woman, I am very grateful for online communities. But, none of mine qualify as social media. Just blogs I read and one forum in which I participate. But, I never have a day in which I do not read/comment/participate because that's pretty much all I can do now.
Loath though I am to offer a technology solution to a technology problem, I have found that since I buxed up for an Apple Watch with LTE, I can leave my distracting, intrusive, five-year-old iPhone at home, and still be accessible for phone calls, messages, and it will call my wife if I fall and break my senior citizen neck. Other than that, it is a completely dumb wrist mounted phone.
This seems to be a common thought on Substack at the moment. Isn't it funny how these things do seem to come in waves? It was actually my resolution when I celebrated a year on Substack to... get off Substack! Not really. I love Substack. But I was often frantic in my use of it and caught up in things that had very little to do with my real-world values. Something really shifted for me mentally and I now turn off my phone completely post 830 PM until the next morning. I can actually sleep, I finish books, I don't have as much anxiety. I also joined a gym, go for walks, go to the library, and reached out to my parish book club and IRL friends.
It is a tough line when you do this 'for a living' - Born of Wonder isn't my primary source of income, but it's not nothing, and it also is very meaningful to me. But if it's sacrificing my mental health, time with my kids, living what I preach, my faith... that's a problem. I've actually taken on more professional work in areas that I enjoy but are not my 'passion' and it's actually been very clarifying to me - work can have its place, its necessity, and then BOW, Substack, etc, can be for joy, edification, etc. But more so, it can push me to get offline and live my life.
Tsh, I've been writing on Substack for years and have noticed the huge increase of traffic in just the past 12 months. Honestly, I'm thinking of pulling the plug on my Substack newsletter so that I can spend more time writing my novel. Maybe it's burnout on this format, but there just feels like I'm competing in a very noisy public square. It's just not fun anymore.
Yea. Ooof. I definitely feel all of this. I want to be growing in virtue and challenged to have good boundaries and to be living my real life. But Substack is eating a lot of my real life. So I'm trying to find the balance and that seems tricky. I think I'm just aware of how much I'm stewarding in having a (still small) larger readership. Whether we like it or not, if we're writing online, it's its own sort of discipleship, and there's limits to what that looks like in an online space. I started to feel like I was looking for something to say in the last few weeks, instead of having something I was excited to share. So I'm going to experiment with writing every other week, and am strangely excited about the prospect of doing nothing with my Thursday afternoon :) I might even think enough to then have something to write about. I'm reading Digital Minimalism (mostly good, but have some thoughts about the unique challenges of "digital minimalism" while also trying to maintain a social life/intellectual life when you're fairly isolated and at home with many small people...) and one thing that struck me is the emphasis on the need for solitude -- time without input from anyone else's brain. I keep noticing myself drifting off in thought while I'm listening to a podcast, so I've just been trying to shut it off if I notice I'm not really absorbing it. It's like I cannot find enough quiet spaces and my brain is saturated.
I have to check this inclination of "death by analysis" in myself, especially with tech-related issues. I mentioned this on one of Claire's notes earlier, but - it just screams SCREWTAPE LETTERS to me. That is to say: anything we perceive as being for the good can easily be flipped to our detriment, if we let it become an idol. And positions on tech use *are* very much landing in that camp. At some point, when wrestling on and on with the existential angst of it all, it finally occurred to me that I was devoting *more* of my energy toward tech use by virtue of deriding it!
Also, this stuff about simple living really hits home and is so, so true. I've had to pull the "Farmers eat french fries too" card many times to try to calm down situations of one-upmanship. When virtue signalling begets purity contests, it's just not fun or fruitful anymore. In the simple living online-land, a gal had shared something awhile ago that really rubbed me the wrong way - it divided folks into camps. The people who "care" vs. the people who "don't care," those who are like "sheep" (a metaphor I have many thoughts on, but that's another topic), and those who aren't. It felt so deflating to me...even though we've chosen to make a life out of farming, even though heritage skills and old-time everything is what really floats my boat (and I believe it's good for our souls, too), that sort of judgmentalism just ends up weaponizing something that is otherwise lovely. In modern life, so many of these skills are luxuries, not necessities - even if that's a recent change in human history. So many people are hanging on by a thread, I can't imagine tsk-tsking them because they buy a loaf of bread instead of make it. EVEN THOUGH I believe baking bread has a beautiful value in it. Surviving looks very different today than it did 100 years ago, and the reality is that it's cheaper and more accessible to buy a prepared meal from a fast food place than it is to buy fresh organic vegetables. The infrastructure is broken, not the people.
An example that comes to mind is our Roomba - years ago, we decided to try one out. And it's SO NICE to have a little robot zip around and get the extra dirt and dog hair in between our mopping. I read a blog post once (a simple living site) where robot vacuums were made fun of (fair enough, they're an easy target) - but the blogger had a dishwasher. I couldn't help but think about how we're all choosing compromise somewhere; we don't have a dishwasher (though it would be swell if we did), so I like to think our robot vacuum is a decent trade...something that buys me a little extra time here and there.
(Whoops, I wrote a book. Haha - sorry. This stuff gets me tippity-typing!)
You've articulated this problem really well, Tsh. Thank you for raising this concern and offering such practical encouragement!
I have been concerned lately to see some Substack writers mention using Grammarly. I'm distressed by this, as I think it is detrimental to authentic communication, as well as to developing and maintaining the craft of writing. Certainly, the sense of "what is 'okay'" is shifting in writing, but I worry. We need to use our own words to communicate with one another when we're saying anything beyond mere information (and even then, I prefer our own words!). Writing and reading are so personal.
It worries me so much that I may be reading AI words instead of human ones, and not know the difference. This strikes me, in part, as "not practicing what we preach" -- interacting as if we are speaking to each other in our own voices, but some of those voices simply are not.
I'm interested to hear what others think about in-between AI like Grammarly, including from those who might disagree with me.
Thank you Tsh. I'm happy to share some thoughts, as a reader who does writing only for private purposes thus far. I have realized that I'm taking too much in - too many substacks, too much news, too many podcasts. And many of them are, as you say, providing some community/support for countercultural choices like not giving my tweens phones, believing in reading real books (even old ones!), etc.. All of this content, even good content, has started to overwhelm me. It feels literally a gluttony. I'm having to consciously scale back. This is also helped that so many substacks are costing $5-10/month (which is very reasonable for one or two or even three, but quickly adds up especially since I'm (counterculturally) working very little in order to focus on my family. I consciously pay for my local and national news sources as well. And my local paper directly supports dozens of people or more for the cost of supporting 3 substacks.)
I have found that the convergence of being overwhelmed and the cost is helping me to pare down how much I am consuming. I'm aware of leaving wonderful links unchecked, wonderful writers unread. Just as I haven't read every classic book, or every wonderful new release. A huge part of modern life is managing all of the things that, in themselves, are good and wonderful things. However, too much of a good thing ...
I purchased a year of your substack and I'm glad I did. It takes the decision out of the month-to-month and it was very affordable. I truly value your content. I do value other content as well that I don't subscribe to due to cost and volume but I'm feeling okay with that.
I remember reading that at one time furniture was designed to showcase your belongings because most people did not own many objects. Objects were crafted. Now furniture is designed to store or hide our objects. Objects are often cheap and people give or throw away items after very few uses and we complain that we have too much stuff. We are in an age in which so much of what we need to do is sift through all of this wonderful content, just as we sift through so many other wonderful things.
For Lent, I've tried to make space for silence. For folding clothes or going for a walk without a podcast. For sitting down without taking out my phone or iPad or sitting at a computer to read. I'm trying not to check the news as often. I love that Alan Jacobs says he reads the Economist every week for the news. That would be so amazing! (I'd have to check my local new though too.)
I really appreciate your authenticity in this arena. Taking these risks and sharing your struggles makes it much easier to relate to you and to trust your takes on things. Thank you for all you do.
As a 76 year old, handicapped woman, I am very grateful for online communities. But, none of mine qualify as social media. Just blogs I read and one forum in which I participate. But, I never have a day in which I do not read/comment/participate because that's pretty much all I can do now.
Loath though I am to offer a technology solution to a technology problem, I have found that since I buxed up for an Apple Watch with LTE, I can leave my distracting, intrusive, five-year-old iPhone at home, and still be accessible for phone calls, messages, and it will call my wife if I fall and break my senior citizen neck. Other than that, it is a completely dumb wrist mounted phone.
This seems to be a common thought on Substack at the moment. Isn't it funny how these things do seem to come in waves? It was actually my resolution when I celebrated a year on Substack to... get off Substack! Not really. I love Substack. But I was often frantic in my use of it and caught up in things that had very little to do with my real-world values. Something really shifted for me mentally and I now turn off my phone completely post 830 PM until the next morning. I can actually sleep, I finish books, I don't have as much anxiety. I also joined a gym, go for walks, go to the library, and reached out to my parish book club and IRL friends.
It is a tough line when you do this 'for a living' - Born of Wonder isn't my primary source of income, but it's not nothing, and it also is very meaningful to me. But if it's sacrificing my mental health, time with my kids, living what I preach, my faith... that's a problem. I've actually taken on more professional work in areas that I enjoy but are not my 'passion' and it's actually been very clarifying to me - work can have its place, its necessity, and then BOW, Substack, etc, can be for joy, edification, etc. But more so, it can push me to get offline and live my life.
Tsh, I've been writing on Substack for years and have noticed the huge increase of traffic in just the past 12 months. Honestly, I'm thinking of pulling the plug on my Substack newsletter so that I can spend more time writing my novel. Maybe it's burnout on this format, but there just feels like I'm competing in a very noisy public square. It's just not fun anymore.
Yea. Ooof. I definitely feel all of this. I want to be growing in virtue and challenged to have good boundaries and to be living my real life. But Substack is eating a lot of my real life. So I'm trying to find the balance and that seems tricky. I think I'm just aware of how much I'm stewarding in having a (still small) larger readership. Whether we like it or not, if we're writing online, it's its own sort of discipleship, and there's limits to what that looks like in an online space. I started to feel like I was looking for something to say in the last few weeks, instead of having something I was excited to share. So I'm going to experiment with writing every other week, and am strangely excited about the prospect of doing nothing with my Thursday afternoon :) I might even think enough to then have something to write about. I'm reading Digital Minimalism (mostly good, but have some thoughts about the unique challenges of "digital minimalism" while also trying to maintain a social life/intellectual life when you're fairly isolated and at home with many small people...) and one thing that struck me is the emphasis on the need for solitude -- time without input from anyone else's brain. I keep noticing myself drifting off in thought while I'm listening to a podcast, so I've just been trying to shut it off if I notice I'm not really absorbing it. It's like I cannot find enough quiet spaces and my brain is saturated.
👏 YES 👏
I have to check this inclination of "death by analysis" in myself, especially with tech-related issues. I mentioned this on one of Claire's notes earlier, but - it just screams SCREWTAPE LETTERS to me. That is to say: anything we perceive as being for the good can easily be flipped to our detriment, if we let it become an idol. And positions on tech use *are* very much landing in that camp. At some point, when wrestling on and on with the existential angst of it all, it finally occurred to me that I was devoting *more* of my energy toward tech use by virtue of deriding it!
Also, this stuff about simple living really hits home and is so, so true. I've had to pull the "Farmers eat french fries too" card many times to try to calm down situations of one-upmanship. When virtue signalling begets purity contests, it's just not fun or fruitful anymore. In the simple living online-land, a gal had shared something awhile ago that really rubbed me the wrong way - it divided folks into camps. The people who "care" vs. the people who "don't care," those who are like "sheep" (a metaphor I have many thoughts on, but that's another topic), and those who aren't. It felt so deflating to me...even though we've chosen to make a life out of farming, even though heritage skills and old-time everything is what really floats my boat (and I believe it's good for our souls, too), that sort of judgmentalism just ends up weaponizing something that is otherwise lovely. In modern life, so many of these skills are luxuries, not necessities - even if that's a recent change in human history. So many people are hanging on by a thread, I can't imagine tsk-tsking them because they buy a loaf of bread instead of make it. EVEN THOUGH I believe baking bread has a beautiful value in it. Surviving looks very different today than it did 100 years ago, and the reality is that it's cheaper and more accessible to buy a prepared meal from a fast food place than it is to buy fresh organic vegetables. The infrastructure is broken, not the people.
An example that comes to mind is our Roomba - years ago, we decided to try one out. And it's SO NICE to have a little robot zip around and get the extra dirt and dog hair in between our mopping. I read a blog post once (a simple living site) where robot vacuums were made fun of (fair enough, they're an easy target) - but the blogger had a dishwasher. I couldn't help but think about how we're all choosing compromise somewhere; we don't have a dishwasher (though it would be swell if we did), so I like to think our robot vacuum is a decent trade...something that buys me a little extra time here and there.
(Whoops, I wrote a book. Haha - sorry. This stuff gets me tippity-typing!)