07 december 2023
I replied in a reddit thread about how economists say the everything is fine
while shopping for groceries and talking to people irl says otherwise. I
mentioned there was holes in my shoes and I'm reaching proper Dickensian
levels of poverty. Predictably someone asked me my shoe size, indicating if
they have something that fits they'll send it to me. I reply to this that
I've had a stalker and I already patched up some thrift store shoes. I said if
they really want to help they can subscribe to my substack because right now
that's one of my only possible ways generating some income (given my current
inability to sleep and thus wake up for a 9-5 job regularly). Unlike Feels,
writing serious articles about my chronic illness or the difficulties of
doing office work without the benefit of a healthy body is hard when you know
nobody is reading.
Here there are no metrics and the act of writing is cathartic. It's the happy medium of safely "private" but also practice for publicly expressing myself authentically. It helps me learn to bypass my impulse to pretend everything is fine at all times - to mold myself into being inoffensively acceptable.
On substack, it feels like a job interview. I have to prove I can write medium to long form content cohesively. I have to be worthy of eventually charging $5/mo for four articles a month. I have 3 subscribers and until I have at least 10 it's going to feel the same way it felt to send hundreds of resumes between 2013 and now to zero response.
For some reason, the same people who publicly make reddit comments about how they're going to send me a hand-me-down pair of shoes (If I just give them my real name, address, and shoe size, woo!) are also unwilling to subscribe to my dumb little blog. I can't understand why someone would be willing to ask me for my private info so they can mail me something but are unwilling to give me a free-tier subscription. I've had a stalker for years and it makes me entertain the paranoid thought that this is some kind of trap. If it's not an elaborate ruse by my stalker (who i'm pretty sure died in 2020...), it's more evidence that most people will performativity offer help but won't listen to what I actually need even when that need is must less cost and effort than what they're offering.