#66 Seven things right now
Hi! It’s been a while. There are many more of you! Hello! Welcome! Happy New Year! I heard 2024 is going to be great.
First, a note of huge gratitude to those of you who sent me money because I was making my content free—I cannot begin to tell you what that show of support meant to me, along with the words you sent, and every other tiny little thing you all did and continue to do. I so deeply love and respect this community and cannot begin to express the depth of my gratitude for you; for reading my work at all, for sharing it when it matters to you, for interacting, for financially supporting, for engaging, for sending me little love notes. I am overwhelmed by your continued generosity and the uniform kindness you show me and each other.
That being said, I did not plan to not write for as long as I did. For paid folks: I paused billing last week until May 1st, and the offer continues to stand if you want a refund1 (instructions in footnote for how to). Thanks for being understanding of my absence. I did work on my book and turn in work to my editor for the first time since 2019, and for those that helped keep me insured and fed* while I was doing that, I’m figuring out something special (outtakes, list of all books read in my research for it, chance to win early copies, something). (*Including those of you who sent money via PayPal and may not show as “paid” in Substack; I got you.)
This is a mediocre newsletter with some thoughts I’ve been having that I’m publishing after allowing myself a few hours to write it. I’m doing this to rip the bandaid off. I have a story going on over here that because I haven’t published for a while I need to come back with the most epic, best essay you’ve ever read to make up for my shittiness. Instead of that I’m dropping a few thoughts of what I’m thinking about right now, just to get back to it, and the most epic, best essay you’ve ever read to make up for my shittiness will come later.
I love you. I missed you. (I love missing you.)
Comments off, but I’ll put them on starting next week. xx
Announcements!
I’m giving a talk next Saturday in Woodstock Bookfest (March 23rd at 7pm) on “The Cult and Cost of Confession” with the lovely and terrifyingly brilliant
The description of the talk: “Recasting yourself as the author of a traumatic event can be profoundly healing. We take back narrative agency when we write our version of events. Memoir and storytelling are powerful tools in confronting pain, abuse, illness, and addiction. But in a digital attention economy, what does it mean to write about trauma? What if your wound gets the most clicks and goes viral? In this conversation, Holly Whitaker and Sophie Strand will discuss the differences between privacy and secrecy in a moment when social media’s algorithms encourage us to mine our worst experiences and turn them into profit.”
I’m taking The Mantra Project off the market for good March 31st
It’s on sale for $11 from now until then to honor that it was conceived on 11/11! 2015! The MP has been one of the longest surviving parts of my earlier work (a co-project with Tammi Salas) it’s a forty-day course to support you in making changes around your drinking, but also can be used by anyone for anything. It’s basically affirmations with essays and many people love it very much. It’s being retired from service.
1. things you can do that you think you can’t
The TL;DR of why I have not written the last few months is because I needed a huge long break from Substack.
Far more than I thought I did when I posted my last essay in December (in which said I would take a few weeks off). I also want to be clear that by break I mean I also stopped reading the many newsletters I subscribe to.
As I have in the past, it would be easy for me to tell you about my struggles and why writing at all or writing here for money has been specifically challenging for me over the past few years. But I think that kind of discourse makes what I’ve been experiencing seem exceptional when it’s not. It is not exceptional to be burned out on the internet, state of the world, too much information, being part of the noise, the inhumanity we show each other, or toggling between an ad for a new Skims bodysuit and reports of an active shooter climate social media genocide Mars AI Stanley cup. It is not exceptional to be barely holding on, no matter who you are, right now, and for the past many years too.
I was barely holding on. I’m not anymore. And it’s because I stopped taking in information that hurt through mediums that hurt including this one; stopped supplying information to an overly saturated internet; and sat and did deep research and deep writing that I am not anymore. Because of my break from it all I feel better, think better, my writing is better, I want to create, my ideas are bigger, and I feel healthy, sane, grounded; resilient. I benefitted. My work benefitted. Readers will benefit.
I am not arguing for everyone to do what I do, because what I do is a direct response to how I’m making my way through whatever *this* {gestures to entire world} is.
But I prome you that there are things you think you can’t do, that you think you’re not allowed to do, but that you absolutely need to do to passably function and potentially thrive. And I am saying, do those things.
2. 100 days of Italian
I’m doing the #100dayproject, where you commit to doing something creative for 100 days in a row, and while I’m not sure it’s actually creative I’m practicing my Italian for ten minutes every day.
is hosting calls to support folks doing it. (The project started in February but I started last weekend. We can be late to the party.)3. no days of Spotify
Last week Emily sent me a link to this instagram post about the terms of service (TOS) for one of Spotify’s business arms, Findaway Voices, that acts as a kind of publishing house of audiobooks for independent creators (think of self-published books, but audio). The instagram post is worth watching, but if you don’t the TOS basically says “If you give us your content we will fuck you hard and take all your money, and you will give us your content because you have basically no other real choice in the matter.” It’s a bad deal for creators as most things are.
Anyway, I didn’t catch that the post was for some specific type of Spotify business related to their own publishing arm or this “Findaway Voices” thing, I just heard “Spotify” and “authors” and “fucked” and assumed incorrectly Spotify was using AI to somehow take our books and give them away for free2, which got me to do some light investigation, which is how I found out THEY ALREADY ARE DOING THIS. Anyone with a premium Spotify account can already listen to my book without buying it. Spotify is taking my content, and giving it to people, and they are collecting the money for it.3
Years ago I found out how much musicians make from Spotify when I dated one. (It’s nothing, basically.) There was some article on the internet that broke down the different streaming service royalty structures (Tidal was the best), and it suggested the best way to support a musician was to buy their album from Bandcamp or Apple and skip the streaming all together, which was a non-starter for me.
I moved to Tidal for a little while, but the functionality of Spotify was superior enough to warrant compromising my integrity, plus that musician and I broke up. The ease of using Spotify, the functionality of it, has always kept me there, and always trumped any ethical concern I ever had. Because who wouldn’t want to listen to every song ever made for next to nothing, for pennies? (236 million people pay for Spotify premium.)
A few years ago a friend offered to email me all their ADHD books—they were scanned into .pdf form, I could import them to my Kindle for free. I said thanks but I refused to download them. Instead I bought the ones I wanted to read new, because it mattered to me that writers are compensated, and that I don’t steal their work. If a book is still in print, I won’t buy a used copy unless it’s a rare exception. If you’re my friend and you write a book and send me an advanced copy, please know I’ve still purchased the hardcover. Sometimes I’m REALLY into a book I’m reading in hard copy and I’ll decide I want to listen to it when I am driving. Sometimes I’m reading a book on my Kindle and I think, I need to hold this. Sometimes I can’t remember a quote exactly and instead of leafing through a hard copy book, I’ll just buy the e-book and search. It is not rare for me to spend $50 to $100 to own every electronic and paper version of one single tome. A chunk of my income goes to acquiring literary works. I expect to pay for books.
What I am saying is I am a writer and I believe writers should be paid, and I go out of my way to make sure they are paid. What I am also saying is I am a writer and I’ve fucked over a ton of musicians for years so I could get cheap music.
For the most ignoble and self-centered reasons I canceled my Spotify last week. Since then I have purchased a handful of albums on Apple (one of the more ethical ways to purchase music and pay musicians directly), and this is how I plan to acquire and listen to music going forward.
The thing that has kept me using Spotify for years is the fact that I love being able to listen to whatever I want to whenever I want to—the abundance of options; the endless supply.
The thing that I love about having only ten albums is not deciding.
Wrapped up in this story are two themes: (1) I find myself less and less willing to pay for convenience when the price tag is someone else’s suffering; (2) I find myself loving a life with fewer and fewer options.
3a. the ten albums
(This music collection will not make sense.) Sea Change, Beck; Rubber Soul, Beatles; Souveniers, Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru; Prehension, Joep Beving; Blue, Joni Mitchell; Krishna Das Greatest Hits, Krishna Das; The Magicians Private Library, Holly Miranda; Silk Purse, Linda Ronstadt; The Best of Nina Simone, Nina Simone; Thelonius Monk, Genius of Modern Music v.1, Thelonius Monk; Pinkerton, Weezer.
3b. good books
I’ve read a ton of great books the past few months. Standouts include The Alphabet vs. The Goddess; Queer Ecologies; Psychonauts; and Slaying the Dragon. These are all extreme non-fiction and the best things I’ve learned are that seagulls are lesbians, alcoholism was originally thought to be a symptom of homosexuality, and that I probably would have been dead if I lived in the late 1800s when you could get tonics of chloroform, cannabis and opium at the 7-11.
4. I stopped getting botox
I started getting Botox at age 25. I had rosacea from drinking and needed laser to fix it which is why I ended up in an office that had Botox at all. The nurse told me I also had an angry brow; very strong forehead muscles I guess that were already prematurely aging me. It was a little bit of Botox to start, nothing invasive, to keep me from looking like an angry woman.
I kept getting it done for 20 years, because every few months it would wear off and I would think about my strong forehead muscles and looking angry and premature aging. Then I just stopped last fall. It’s not that I have ethical concerns about Botox, or that I think I shouldn’t have gotten it to begin with, or that I think ‘natural’ is best or any thing like that. Botox has been fucking great. It’s just that I don’t think I can be bothered to care anymore.
5. last summer
There are many days where I cannot believe what is happening is happening. I cannot believe the conversations I am having, how it is not a wild or crazy thing to ask your friends where you’ll meet in the event of [insert catastrophic event], the daffodils in February, none of it. The barista said this summer better be fun it might be the last, and I nodded like they’d said Looks warm out there today.
I am not saying that the world is ending, because the world has always been ending, but I am saying Wow this is a lot. I am also finding in this madness that I agree with the emerging priorities of the many around me that do not look like the priorities we were taught to prioritize.
It’s funny how all the cool things we could have been doing all along only present themselves as possibilities when there appears to be nothing left to lose.
6. a few quick questions
I haven’t read anyones newsletter for the last two months and it’s been lovely, like how taking Instagram breaks used to be lovely. It’s made me realize how oversaturated I am with newsletters, and what a huge amount of energy it takes up simply seeing them arrive in my inbox. It’s made me consider what and how I’m going to consume going forward differently.
I am really curious about your sweet spot for newsletters—how often do you like to get them in general, and how often would you like one from me, and what content is your favorite? I’m not saying I’m going to adjust, but I have no baseline for your current desires and I'd like to know.
7. places i’ve written lately
My friend Sophie took pictures of places she’s written lately. Here are some of mine.
Send an email to contact@hollywhitaker.com from the email address you receive Substack emails from, subject line “Substack Refund”. Note, some emails don’t make it to me through Substack. If you’ve sent a request for a refund and not gotten it taken care of yet, send it again. I usually respond to those type of emails within 24 hours; if I don’t it means I didn’t get the email.
I realize this is not how AI works per se
To be fair, this is no different then Kindle Unlimited; they both “pay royalties” when you dig into the terms, but there are time requirements (the person needs to actually read your book), and other issues that make it nominal/fractional income for majority