Reasons Not to Write
You’ve been living out of a backpack in the southern hemisphere for the last four months, and surrounded by people even when you’re sleeping for the last two. You’re cranky, you’re exhausted, and you can’t even charge your computer properly because your adapter falls out of the wall whenever you try to plug in your laptop.
Morning in the kitchen of a hostel I stayed at, probably (Photo by Jake Weirick on Unsplash) Now that you’re home from the above chaotic adventure, a solid week of sleep under your belt and access to outlets, desks, rooms with doors galore, it’s just too much to catch up on. Where does one even start? Do you start with the failed meet-cute where an attractive man helped you retrieve the necklace his dog snatched off, but ended up being a total sex-obsessed creep? The circumstances that lead to you wandering around your hostel with a dead bird? Ugly-crying on the last leg of “the best zipline adventure in New Zealand” and making the unbreachable cliques of pre-existing friends (re: reason for crying) very uncomfortable? Better sleep some more just to be sure.
Your nails are too long.
Everything is in the wrong place! How can you possibly write anything of substance, when your desk is giving off such weird, unapproachable vibes? Stuck over there in the corer, covered in notebooks and folders, no window to look out wistfully while pillaging
trauma porn“content” from the depths of your (my) fragile human ego??Now that you’ve rearranged your bedroom, it hits you that you are now living in your mom’s basement at age 39 (*cough* 40) because you made the mistake so many other idealistic, hopeless romantic souls have made before you—changing careers, selling everything you own and giving up your low-rent apartment simultaneously to move in with a… how do I stay civil here… LOVABLE PARASITE??? Rendering you completely and utterly Fucked when you inevitably break up. And that’s… fun.
There’s this (self-imposed?) pressure to come off as bouncy and healed now that you’ve (I’ve) completed this epic 4-month trip around Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Singapore, when in all reality, you’re feeling anxious, depressed and confused; like everyone else who’s even remotely paying attention on this planet right now.
You’re actually just not ready to write in a public space yet, but it’s been 2 months since your last post, and you have paid subscribers?!? What the fuck is wrong with you (me)? Better barf something out, to assuage the guilt enough that you can ACTUALLY rest and process what the hell just happened, and eventually write about it in a way that doesn’t completely alienate everybody you know.
Friends, I need just a bit more time, is what I’m trying to say, but I promise I’ll be back and in full over-sharing force soon!
In the meantime, I sneaked into the back end of substack and prolonged any paid subscriptions at no extra cost by what I was intending to be 2 months, but ended up being 30-90 days because of what I’m going to call bureaucratic tech nonsense.
I was hoping you’d all be notified and my radio silence-induced guilt could finally take a backseat to more important worrying, but one of my paid subs (*cough* my mom) informed me that she got no such notification. Thanks for nothing, substack…
Sending you love from the last dregs of winter in Nova Scotia!
Perhaps I'm being selfish and self-absorbed here, but I for one am grateful for your depressive misery and congested soul. Maybe under other circumstances I might be able to generate some semblance of empathy and compassion, but frankly I enjoyed reading your post to such a degree I can't help but hope that your despair continues so that I get to read more and more such posts. In fact, I'm reminded of the saying, "Zen Masters don't write great novels" - you get enlightened and suddenly all that delicious snark, irony, and self-loathing is abandoned, leaving the readers of your posts humorlessly bereft. No, I say, forget that bodhisattva shit, and embrace wallowing and distress; and when the guilt from having failed your subscribers and your friends overlays your dysfunction and helplessness deeply enough and gooilly enough, feebly drag yourself to the computer and write another hilarious blurb for our enjoyment. As lives go, you could do worse.
They don’t call you DeRollercoaster for nothing. Love you, Lauren. I’ll come visit you in NS. 💕🌙