In Spite
I write a lot about hope, and I do think it is an important thing to hold close and tight. Yet lately I have been pondering the idea that fear and hope walk hand in hand, that to free yourself from hope is to also free yourself from fear.
"Cease to hope and you will cease to fear… the two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to. Fear keeps pace with hope… both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present." - Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
I see the sentiment here, I do but I don't know if it's sustainable for most people. It is natural to feel hope, to feel fear when you care about something, but I also understand that hope can dry up. Not permanently, but it ebbs and flows as all organic things do and despair is equally as natural, particularly when you live in a world where once in a lifetime events never seem to stop happening. When I was looking at moving to Ghost, to realise that it is a paid model, it felt easy to want to give up. I spiraled for an evening or so and woke up to one of many absolutely embarrassing pieces published by The New York Times. The exact piece isn't the point, it was the poor quality and the almost certainly enormous pay the author received for something brimming with conjecture, data removed from context and bizarre extrapolations. When I was young and wanting to pursue journalism, I looked up to the NYT – hell, I even applied to their summer internship! Over the years is has been immensely disappointing to watch them do doe eyed profiles of white supremacists, throw trans people under the bus and run cover for a genocide. Outlets left and right have been publishing pieces with quotes from authors from interviews they never did, entirely inaccurate and generated summer reading lists. All of this, while crushing, has allowed me to tap into another source of energy: spite.
Even if my writing is far from the best, even if only a handful of people like it, it is mine and mine alone. I refuse to outsource my thinking, my rage, my love to a fucking machine. I refuse to offload my life in the name of being less, thinking less, feeling less. Life is hard, but I'd rather produce nothing than the shallow facsimile of creation LLMs offer. Quite simply, fuck that. I refuse to sell my values as a person for speed or ease or exposure.
After what could reasonably be described as a minor meltdown, my best friend insisted on funding this endeavour and encouraged me to write more. Part of taking my own writing seriously, particularly if I want to make this something I do for work, is accepting money for the work I put in (obvious, I know). In turn, people paying me creates an obligation to sit and write rather than running away from it when I am down on myself and my work. I am desperately trying to get comfortable with this fact.
So, the plan: weekly on Sundays, I will be sending out something called Bullet Points which is a collection of things I was thinking about through the week and one of those will serve as a jumping off point for a larger, more thought out piece. Any comments about what you're most interested in hearing about are more than welcome. Ideally, the habit of this will result in more than twice a week, but start small and all that. Any comments, shares, all that are also welcome, against my natural instincts.
Additionally, I have set up a Ko-fi, which allows for one time tips or recurring memberships to different creators. I want to be clear, I am not putting any of this behind a paywall. Holding Hands in Hell will be freely available, but if you're willing to help fund the fees required to maintain it, you can leave a tip or join as a member here https://ko-fi.com/holdinghandsinhell.
Thank you, as ever, for being here friends. As the world weighs heavy, I have grown weary of spending my time on things that don't light my soul on fire. I only have so much time on this earth, and I'd like to spend a good chunk of that writing for you.
