For over twenty years I wrote for myself, by hand, every single day.
I miss it. Keeping a journal gave me a wonderfully rich inner life.
This Substack is just pages taken from those old books. I intend to post selections that feel embarrassing. I’m already such an open book, and a shameless one; if there’s something even I am embarrassed about, let’s out with it already. So I’ll post the morally incriminating and the ridiculous. I’ll also post pages that feel illuminating or make me laugh. A lot of my notebooks are me trying to live up to my lofty aspirations, while also being a sardonic vagabond who’s too cool to care about the material realm—so cringe it’s practically a dark comedy.
It’s bizarre to retroactively witness your beliefs and whole-ass self get created and reassembled piece by piece. Bizarre and so fucking cool.
I am working on a novel at the moment, so churning out smart essays on Substack is currently beyond my capacity. But I want to play along! May these notebook pages from my past let me feel like I’m still spilling my guts to the world in new ways.
Totally unrelated, I’m an essayist. Please avail yourself of my actual edited/published/brilliant work and not just these private notebook pages! Or don’t. Half the point of this Substack is to chaotically undermine my good reputation, possibly as a person, definitely as a literary writer.
If you are unimpressed with my journal entries from twenty years ago, you are free to hand-write me a letter of complaint.
