content
on making less and feeling more//work in process 48.
This might be an unpopular opinion coming from a writer on this platform, but there’s too much content in the world.
Not to be confused with its heteronym con-TENT (“a state of peaceful happiness,” Oxford), social media CON-tent is so ubiquitous, it’s almost meaningless. In fact, I had to look up its definition to be sure: “information, message, or media shared by [social media] users to engage, inform, or entertain their followers.”
It’s ironic that the two words are almost antonyms.
CON-tent comes from outside of us, from our performative or public selves. Content conditions us for discontent. Rather than being in a state of peaceful happiness with what we have, we want more: more likes, followers, relevance, reach. We’re plagued by the nagging worry that other people are producing more and better content and that we ought to keep up. Who tells us this? Content does.
Stories and narratives, on the other hand, come from inside of us, from the imagination. One is not necessarily better or purer than the other. They’re just different. Content is marketing. Stories are art.
I started this newsletter a year and a half ago to regain agency over the stories I was putting into the world. At the time, I thought Substack was a publishing platform for sending my weekly writing into the world. I used it as a tool, not a network—a vehicle for writing, not marketing.
So much has changed in the past few months.
Lots of people I know have started newsletters. This makes me glad: I love reading writers I love and finding new ones! To keep track of my subscriptions, I downloaded the app on my phone and found Notes, a running feed of comments and posts, where it seemed everyone was gushing about how much they loved this new caring, creative community. How cozy it was, how kind!
Seemingly overnight, though, Notes was flooded with tips and posts about how to increase your followers in xxx easy steps. My success story could be yours! Excited to be here where the nice people are! And also, the subtext: follow my formula exactly or else spend your life toiling in obscurity and die pathetic, broke, and alone.
We were advised to post to Notes every few hours every day to gain more visibility. “Just try different things to see what works!” one writer urged. Whee! More content! As of yesterday afternoon, Substack now tracks the fastest-growing and highest-earning publications, “ranked by annual recurring revenue (ARR),” on its “leaderboards.”
Hello, since when did this become a Peloton class? A system to be hacked and gamed. Won.
Our deep human need to be known and seen is overwhelming us. Our brains cannot process the sheer volume of content. Despite our best intentions, our insatiable hunger for recognition is leaving us starved for true connection. We’re flooding our own zone.
The Atlantic story “The Age of Social Media is Ending” argues this very point: Humans aren’t meant to absorb as much information as we do. We are not all destined to be famous or known widely; it’s preposterous and unhealthy to expect this.1 Oxford’s word of the year for 2024 was “brain rot,” as in the mental fog and disarray we experience when we consume too much content. A post I read on Notes today (ironic, I know), lamented, Can’t we just have hobbies? Why do we have to monetize everything?
Can’t we just make our art in semi-obscurity and be content?
Last week I was in New England on a college tour with my 16-year-old daughter. Everywhere we went people were incredibly, almost freakishly friendly: grandpa Uber drivers, total strangers, shopkeepers, pizza-tossers all took time to chat—not to exchange a few passing words but to actually talk.
This is why we flock to social media. We long for contact, connection. Conversation, not content. We want to feel like we’re around the kitchen table with our friends, reading our poems aloud, or late-night at a party after most of the guests have gone, and we sink into low couches of a conversation pit and gab until it’s so much later than we thought.
I don’t want to rain on your Substack parade, but content will not make us content.
I’m not going anywhere, but I will be making changes. I’ve deleted the app on my phone, so I can focus more on writing, less on marketing. I’m committed to spendmore time on my book and less time on social media, more writing by hand in my notebook and less scrolling. And here’s something we can all do: Pause before we post. Ask ourselves, before we post on any platform, to what end? To make myself or others laugh? To try a new form? To tell the truth? All valid, but take a moment to think about what you’re adding to the conversation and why.
Today I met my writers’ group for our monthly coffee. “So how’s your Substack?” Gina asked us. We each have a newsletter now. We laughed the rueful, beleaguered laughs of authors who need platforms to publish books, and sell them. We speculated about how many followers will land a great book deal. Tens of thousands, a hundred thousand, a million? We sighed ruefully; we already knew the answer:
There’s no point trying to game the system or gain the masses. Just keep writing our weird little stories—those bright, brief flashings in the phenomenal world. Which is, after all, why we do this in the first place.
wishing you a state of peaceful happiness!
katie
UPCOMING EVENTS, WORKSHOPS + RETREATS!
April 23 // Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World is the April Pace of Me Book Club selection! Join me April 23 at 8 PM eastern as I zoom in to discuss Zen, marriage, heartbreak, and healing with readers from around the country! Now avaiable as an audiobook—buy + listen! To register:
May 19 // Writing in the Wild, a literary day trip in conjunction with the Santa Fe International Literary Fest. Join me from 9:30-12 noon for walking, writing, and sitting meditation on the trails of Santa Fe. $100 per person. Message me to reserve your spot today!
NEW!! June 13-16//Brave Over Perfect: A Wilderness and College Essay Writing Camp for Teen Girls, ages 15-18, High Camp Hut, Colorado. College essays are more than an onerous application process, they’re a rite of passage. Who are you and who do you want to become? This four-day mountain writing camp will teach teamwork, expedition skills, narrative self-expression, and lifelong creative practices. Come with curiosity and leave with the bones or a draft of your essay. In collaboration with veteran college essay coach Susie Rinehart, educator and advocate Kelly Burns, and wilderness leader Katie Maccaulay. $895, all inclusive. Space is limited. Message me for details.
September 5-8// Mountain Flow Camp at High Camp Hut, Colorado. Four days of guided writing, rambling, yoga, meditation and other simple, pleasurable practices to inspire your writing and life. Set at a traditional alpine lodge at 11,000 feet in the San Juan Mountains. $2600 per person, shared twin rooms, all inclusive.
A cautionary tale: the algorithm delivered this to my newsfeed earlier in the week, and I mistakenly read it as a new story—it was published in 2022. Social media requires mindful reading and scrutiny.
I've actually been trying to use journaling in place of social media. When I feel the urge to share a thought or feeling, I write in my journal for myself instead of making a social media post. Similar to the need to want to have conversations with real people and using social media as a very poor substitute, I think I've recognized the desire share is a desire to get thoughts out of my own head and explore them further.
When social media was young and we were just interacting with our friends I think social media had value, but now that we are all trying to keep track of multiple people over multiple platforms, no one is going to have the bandwidth to do anything but mindlessly hit a "like" button. Substack started out great because it was a return to long form story telling, but we can't follow 100s of newsletters and possibly hope to read them let alone interact if we feel compelled.