Substack as your journal

Plus: Gratitude for April perspective-shifting posts

Apples for Perspective Shifters

An aha! happened this week. In an attempt to de-fuzz my thinking about upcoming Substack posts, I bought a monthly planner and went back through all the posts for this year, capturing titles, snippets of content, graphics used, etc., as well as engagement stats.

Actually, two insights emerged … the first was a clear indicator of the type of post that seems to garner the most engagement … stories about people … that’s great … I like finding and writing stories about people. The second was how much the process of going back through my posts reminded me of personal insights I had as I was reading the posts of others and writing my own posts … although I promptly forgot most of them. Reflection brought them back.

That shouldn’t have surprised me … I’ve been a bit obsessed about journaling for several years and have published two gratitude journals, and a journal for writer’s conferences. Probably the biggest insight from that work was a recognition of the power of reflection to deepen our thinking and better understand ourselves and our lives. For those of us who write personal stacks, those once-or-twice weekly posts wind up being a treasure box of self-insights.

More about this later in coming posts … but now my gratitude for some of the wisdom I’ve gathered along the way in April. As always, there’s far more that goes unacknowledged, but the posts below were particularly powerful for me.

My Criteria for Perspective Shifting Posts: 1) free to everyone; 2) not from a “celebrity”; 3) changed my thinking.

One thing I love about Substack is the permission to bob and weave, turn on a dime, grok a season’s worth of new leaves in an eye blink, and reinvent myself, my purpose, and my perspective from one post to the next.

In other words, this is a learning place and dozens of new teachers

show up in my inbox every day, sharing words and ideas that make me ponder.

I assume that most of us here, at least occasionally, suffer from the same affliction: creativity rash. You know … that thing that happens when a new idea hits and you have to scratch it, until a day or so later it fades away and you wonder: “What was that?”

That’s what happened with “Iris Songs” … when I decided I wanted to recognize monthly some of the inspiring posts I find here, the idea to call them Iris Songs popped up as a metaphor for fresh thinking. Now it just seems lame.

Among all the amazing posts I read in a month’s time, occasionally some really affect the way I see the world and deserve kudos and an apple at least. It’s only polite to say “thank you” for the wisdom shared … and it’s a helpful practice for me to reflect back and be grateful for those posts.

So, thank you to the following teachers:

david roberts

at Sparks from Culture At A Murder Trial In Queens, New York With My Brother

David’s About Page begins with this description of his writing: “Personal essays on life, literature, and privilege from the POV of generational wealth and living within the Manhattan bubble.” It’s clear that we come from different worlds but his writings cross the divide and often touch me.

This particular post, however, tweaked action. He tells a story of a murder trial where his brother is the public defender. It’s a personal story about his pride in his brother and a culture story about justice unserved and a defendant whose lack of financial resources puts him on the receiving end of that injustice. It’s a compellingly written story that leaves us wondering if justice will be done. (He later posts that the client was found not guilty.)

I knew when I subscribed to David’s Substack that he donates all subscription fees to Robin Hood, New York City’s largest poverty fighting organization. However, it wasn’t until I read this particular post that it dawned on me that he was an example of what I could be doing also. Neither David nor I *need* the income from Substack to meet our lifestyle needs … he because of his financial abundance, me because of my simple needs and the US Social Security system.

*** JW: Immediately, I began to shift my Substack focus to a “service model” I’m calling it “penniless philanthropy.” More about that in coming posts.

“ Only someone whose mind has been opened

can recognize that their mind had once been closed.” — David Roberts

Tara Penry

at Quiet Reading She Didn't Mean to Write a Bestseller - or to Change American Minds And this women's rights advocate definitely didn't set out to be funny.

It’s always fun to discover a hitherto-unknown heroine and Tara gifts us with Samantha Allen (in real life Marietta Holley). In today’s world of high decibel, knives drawn, my-way-or-else discourse, the literary heroine Samantha Allen, wife of Josiah Allen, would seem quaint if not down right doughty. However, her quiet tales of domestic-political comedy may have affected the political scene of women’s rights as much as the louder rhetoric and protests of the leaders of the movement. To quote Tara:

In an age that made suffragettes and female activists the butt of easy jokes, Samantha Allen made suffrage and legal rights for women feel like plain decency — while she cooked her husband’s favorite meals and mended his socks and otherwise showed that strong-minded women, given the vote, would not upset the social order too much.

Tara describes her own writing thus: Quiet Reading is a weekly letter with a mission of inspiring confidence in our complex humanity through close attention to story and language.

*** JW: My shift from this is in process as I wonder if there’s a way to blend in more humor when writing what I probably tend to take too seriously. I need to ponder this more.

Helen Conway

at Encore, Saying no to purpose-driven anxiety Redefining purpose as an inner force not an outer action.

I almost skimmed over this post since I don’t identify that much with anxiety. However, the subtitle and Helen’s About Page pulled me in. Helen states Encore is for anyone who is fascinated with the creative mind and who wants to see the process behind the art and writing.

Beginning with the inspiration of an Elizabeth Gilbert talk, Helen talks about finding herself bedeviled by choice, eternally sparked by the endless curiosity which is the hallmark of creativity. She states, “Perhaps what we are searching for is not the ending of choice itself but a way to make that constant process of choosing less burdensome.”

Somehow, she articulates my own core question, “What I am asking myself is: how do I know, that my choice today to sit in my writing shed and to write about this particular topic was the best thing I could have done with my life today? That it wasn’t - gulp- a waste of time?”

It was like someone strummed a guitar string activating my own angst, and probably that of other Substackers who worry about numbers … subscribers, money, etc. The feeling that, perhaps, we’re wasting our time and should be feeding the starving children in Africa.

“We don’t know,” she says and my heart sinks as I go on to her next words, hoping for magic. “So then the question becomes how do I get rid of the habit of constantly second-guessing my never-ending choices? What habit can I put in its place instead?”

*** JW: Of course, there’s no one answer, but she writes about a process she uses, and it redefines purpose in a way that lets in a little light. My thinking shifts from what “should” I be doing to listening, feeling, seeing what lights me up, makes me feel alive. What comes from within me? The bottomline that I will hold onto is, “We need only listen to our own internal reactions.” This is a rich post that I will need to re-read periodically.

George Bothamley

at Art Every Day Paul Klee - Abstracts

George is a gentle guide through the world of art. Maybe because I love Klee, this post really struck me. Also, because I’m always trying to slow my thinking down, these words especially hit home:

“But I think if we step aside from the idea that art always has to show us some kind of narrative, or representation of reality. . . then, perhaps we can start to see work like this as akin to an object of meditation.”

*** JW: I’m going to take this as a challenge for my Curated Daily Inspiration project for June to focus on the art and words of Klee as daily meditation. Turns out he’s a master of short, pithy quotes … for example:

"Art does not reproduce what we see. It makes us see." ~ Paul Klee

So, thanks again to all of these teachers and all of you at Substack … I think there’s a process of diffusion going on where all of our atoms are mixing and mingling becoming something new.

I look forward to stepping into May with all of you.