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last updated 5 days, 1 hour ago

this piece is a response to feeling less lonely by jay hoffman.

i've felt a lot of tension recently writing — and slowly writing scripts for video essays — for the internet. i say "for the internet" and not "for my audience" (vom) or "for my community" purposely, and for many reasons. i don't know if the people reading are "my" anything, firstly, and i don't always write with the people i know diligently read my posts firmly in mind (sorry to all three of you, i appreciate you more than this implies). mostly thoughm, i say i write for the internet in a technopagan intention sort of a way; i always latently hoped that these writings will lead to something bigger, something i wouldn't have dared dream of. i think this impulse is understandable given the landscape of big breaks, which to say, the breaks getting both everest-like in height, and fewer and farther between.

i am not hoping to sack it all in and write blog posts for a living honestly, but i would like to maybe write books? or make more involved videos, or dare i say, documentaries? i think there are more squiggly paths to all these things, but they all seem to lie on the other side of getting more people more interested in what i currently do, not to even mention the financial side of things.

so there's the "needing to get more eyes" tension, the general "should i even be posting on these platforms?" tension, and the "is this the way to meet the people who will make my life worthwhile to me?" tension. on the latter, i deeply believe in the power of the internet, but maybe posting through it isn't really the way to attract people you want to meet? i should be writing detailed replies in emails maybe? burrowing into discords perhaps? maybe i should actually faithfully use an RSS reader and dive deeper into the indie web. i could also try and get involved in conservations on my neglected mastodon account...

i've grown less and less convinced of the utility of shouting into not the void, but at people with similar views if not similar backgrounds. i think it is a lesson i have to remember from margaret killjoy that writing has utility even if this was the end of the world, that we plant our fruit trees even if the world dies in flame tonight. i think dreaming big, having speculative approaches to now and soon and the far flung future are all valid pursuits, and maybe i've been approaching all this in the wrong way.

i've said before one of my values is rapport and i should start acting like it. i'm unsure if all my writing from here on out will be in conversation with other pieces but i know i really want to be part of the living tapestry of things.

why do you upload things, if you do? do you feel conflicted about it?

this piece is part of my attempt at alphabet superset, a “6-month” creative challenge (i passed a year in september 2024 — with a long break! — and the creator of the challenge finished on 11th August 2025). other posts so far: abolition, bump, boost, culture, discussion, english, formulaic, gone, home, immortality, jargon, knowledge, leaving, monotony, no, permanent, questions, relationships, sensual and technopaganism.

if you liked this post, please:

#alphabet-superset