I didn't want to make a Substack

As a journalist I'm terrified of unpaid work and self-promotion.

I have a list of reasons I didn’t want to make a Substack.

1. No one will read it

2. Additional self-promotion will be my social death

3. It will take time away from my current projects and pitching new ones

4. I’ve been taught not to write for free

5. The idea generally makes me feel nauseous, naked, and unimportant

This week I published an article for GQ about a European members-only club where faux-aristocrats pay to cosplay old money. The article is hilarious - viral material. Reddit snarkers, etiquette workshops, $50,000 trips to Monaco, a ubiquitous obsession with Gossip Girl, and uber-cringe quotes from influencer-bros who have old money tourettes. Just like when you order new clothes online, part of me thought (hoped, prayed) a shiny new piece would fix my life. But the article came out to little fanfare. Later that day, Cosmopolitan broke their five-month silence to tell me they’d be paying a kill fee for a reported feature I wrote last year on the unspoken politics of public mourning on social media.

All to say, whether you’re writing for a legacy publication or a blog, there’s no telling whether you’ll be shouting into the void or not. Perhaps it shouldn’t matter. Most days, I don’t really care. I love to write and I’d like to write more.

So in this spirit, I’d like to overcome these Substack woes.

1. No one will read it

Right now, as I break in this new style of writing, this is honestly a comfort. It’s been baked into my young millennial bones that blog writing is cringe. I’ve done all the mental gymnastics and haven’t been able to outsmart that core truth. I can’t imagine a time where it won’t feel cringe to write, and then post, a pedestrian dispatch from one’s life. (This isn’t true. The answer is obviously the day this pulls in a paycheck.)

2. Additional self-promotion will be my social death

Barf!!!! Self-promotion is the terrible curse of the doer. To make shit happen, you have to post online. Sure, there are exceptions. But I am not one of them.

After college, I worked at a consulting firm in the sweaty Diamond District, a job so boring that I was nearly forced to become a Wordpress blogger, writing half-baked essays that felt like firing an SOS flare into the ether. Sharing these pieces on Instagram gave me the pluck to quit my job to pursue writing full time.

I’ve done this many times — earnestly self-promoting on social media as a kind of tool, humiliation ritual, due-paying in the pursuit of making shit happen for myself. Whether it was the wellness brand that never took off, the vintage clothing pop-up series my friend and I concocted during the pandemic, or this Substack — I always return to the looming question, how many appeals for attention does one get? I fear I’m tapping my followers dry of any remaining G.A.F. in the quest to attract more.

#selfpromotion

3. It will take time away from my current projects and pitching new ones

This is a boring reason (though probably true). As I’m writing this on Thursday at 3pm, I am very much not working on the project whose deadline is fast approaching. But I’m deciding not to care as everything always gets done.

• I’ve been taught not to write for free

Hopefully this won’t remain a nonprofit endeavor. I also have to remind myself that every project as freelance journalist is initially unpaid.

• The idea generally makes me feel nauseous, naked, and unimportant

I hope this doesn’t sound too precious. I feel precious even thinking this. But writing is an enchanting practice. After having written the above, I feel less nauseous and only slightly unclothed. If writing is a muscle that must be flexed, then I am taking vulnerability and humility to the gym.

Though I have no fix to feeling insignificant, nor any assurance this will lead anywhere interesting, I will be doing this more. This being — doing things — even when no one is looking.