What is a newsletter? And why does it feel like another space for failure when you can’t deliver good news? Some personal news! I have no books out! I’ve been fighting off perfectionism and self doubt for months! I’ve got the brain worms from social media!
It feels as though we are reinventing blogging by a more asnine name, only now with an engine of analytics and algorithms to demonstrate to publishers that you can drive 10% of the platform across a bottom line—or make you feel like shit when the data confirms that no one cares.
Whatever, I know how to blog. I know how to be cringe for my life. I’m going to be 24 years old again, writing my blog in my shithole apartment, depressed and fairly certain I’m dying. I’m totally fine. I’m just rawdogging my anxiety without Lexapro, self-medicating with eight dollar bottles of wine, emoting to Dylan lyrics, and smoking cigarettes. I’m wearing this poorly-fitting jacket from the thrift store that I hope makes me look like a poet, or maybe an artist, but it’s mostly just killing me.
How does it feel to be on your own with no direction home?
I don’t know, Bob. It feels fake. None of it is working. Not the writing, not the drinking, and especially not the jacket. I know I should give myself more credit. I’m trying to be unafraid. I’m trying to pull something off. I’m also tired of surviving on things I should give myself credit for. I’m about to max out the card.
These days, I run a popular literary magazine. I’ve published a few bylines that make me feel cool. I don’t have to sit nakedly behind things even I have never heard of. I have a jacket. Having a jacket is the secret. Dare to try several on. Stupid ones. Ugly ones. Ones with (plot) holes. Ones that you swear would never look good on you. It takes only one editor or agent to think the jacket could work.
Then you’ll hem and sew at it until it fits and looks stunning on you and everyone claps. Confetti falls. There is cake. Although more likely what will happen is it will snag and unravel to your complete horror leaving you ass naked again. This is Fucked Optimism with MM Carrigan. Subscribe for more!
Lately I have been looking for my heroes. I need inspiration. I used to spend so much time with them, always reading their books, listening to their albums, and fawning over them with my friends online. They pulled it off. They ran shouting at gates. They did it anyway. They sneered I don’t believe you, you’re a liar when petulant nerds mocked them in the audience. And they looked good in the jackets!
Now it seems they are far away, beloved, somewhere magical off social media, protected by validation. It seems like a reward, a kind of heaven. I long to be saved. I want be whisked away to the reward area to cash in my validation points. Maybe it’s like an arcade redemption counter. Even though the games are rigged, I still long for the biggest prizes.
This is what salvation must be like after a while, but Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues. You can tell by the way she smiles.
I have no idea if anyone will read this. Starting a new platform is hard. So many become non-starters and voids, and that’s if you’re lucky. You could always just implode in front of everyone. Putting yourself out there endlessly is embarrassing. It also feels endlessly necessary to survive. Subscribe! Follow on socials! Save yourself! No one is coming! Is that the answer? That we all subscribe to each other?
I ain't lookin' to analyze you, categorize you, finalize you or advertise you, all I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you.
I worry about running out of ideas often. The other day I tweeted out under TBQ, “Write because you are going to run out of everything else. Fucks to give, money, energy, even life itself. But you will never, ever run out of beautiful ways to describe the moon. It’s also your only talent!”
It resonated with a lot of people. I was mocking myself as I was preparing to write something for this newsletter, staring at the disgusting blankness of a brand new platform with my worries that it finally did happen. For real this time. Blown out my braincells. Finished with the writing thing. Reached the end of my talent. Best to conserve and build scary makeshift shelters around what is left and try to perfect it.
It’s a liar. Running out would not be a crisis. It’s okay to have nothing, not even a jacket. When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose. You're invisible now, you've got no secrets to conceal. How does it feel? Actually? It feels fake, as usual Bob.
I’ve always been inspired by the clip of Dylan’s encore at his 1966 Freetrade Hall show, where the audience booed him, chanted, and stomped their feet, before shouting Judas during the encore. You watch him absorb the final blow of this bastard audience and then proceed to play a mind-blowing, iconic version of Like A Rolling Stone.
But here’s something I’m even more inspired by: everyone involved in this ultra hip, world-changing moment was completely incredulous, even afraid, going back over the tapes in the hotel room, making sure they weren’t wrong in their creative instincts. In 2016, guitarist Robbie Robertson told Rolling Stone, “the only reason tapes of those shows exist today is because we wanted to know, ‘Are we crazy?'”
Trust your instincts. Fight the perfectionists and petulant nerds! Fight the gatekeepers. Play it fucking loud! Maybe the algorithms will hear.
Hunt the good stuff, my friend. Looks like at least a few of us are reading this.
delighted and enthralled to see your writing once more; it has been ten years since I chanced across you. -- some guy