Substack and Risk Aversion Onset

I disappeared for a couple of days from Substack in despair after deciding I had lost a dear friend here because of a tech misunderstanding. Thinking about what vulnerabilities do

“Come on in,” they said. “Join Substack. The water is fine!”

So I jumped in and at first it was all sunshine and light. You know how it is in the honeymoon period, either in a relationship or on a platform. There are more cool and fascinating people than you could possibly have time to follow. It’s all so new and exciting and you want to dive into the depths of the writing forever, write more and more, and spend all day reading others.

Then, the water starts getting murky. And of course, I don’t know about you, but I am primed and ready for things to go wrong. After all, I have had decades of extensive training in things going wrong after a promising beginning. I began to read articles about people’s accounts being suspended for weird reasons like growing the number of subscribers too like or other things. Now, this is unlikely to happen to me as I haven’t yet hit 50 subscribers after quite a number of months here. I’m a tiny fish in the Substack sea. But though I am insignificant, I still can get scared by reading accounts from other people that alert me that it is not as wonderful as it all seemed.

This week began with me trying to unsubscribe from one spamming newsletter in my emailbox and because I had too many boxes checked, accidentally unsubscribing from my friend’s Substack. Aside from one message from Substack about whether I really wanted to unsubscribe myself (“Huh? How is that even possible?” I wondered, then sloped off to do other things), I was clueless until the end of the day when, horrified, I read that I had worried my friend that I had purposefully unsubscribed.

Once miscommunications begin, they can persist, because of normal life busyness on both sides and worries. So when a couple of days went by and I had heard nothing, I decided it was hopeless. I’d lost the person who has been the kindest, more supportive one I have met so far here on Substack. So I didn’t log in for a couple of days.

When I did log in this morning, I found much more encouraging messages. Of course, my going away for a couple of days hasn’t helped so I am not sure. But I am beginning to hope again.

Written Communication and Online Platform

We’ve known for many years that written communication is extremely limited as a way effectively to communicate with people. I’m thinking of L.M. Montgomery story plot based on a premise that letters, really important ones, can be written, then not delivered or lost or mis-directed. Too much can go wrong. The outcome is that the crucial piece of communication was never received, the misunderstanding persisted, and a relationship that had been filled with promise and joy dissolved into pain and alienation.

There are many other problems with writing instead of speaking face to face. The lack of body language and tone. The very personal relationship each of us has with words which means that certain ones unbeknownst to others are terribly triggering emotionally.

Perhaps the biggest problem with words and interacting with other people, though, especially people we do not know very well (or perhaps have never met in person or spoken to), is how what someone says or doesn’t say can interact with everything that has happened up to that point. Trauma, wounding, personality differences, abandonment that has been internalised to an extent that creates massive ship-breaking reefs that are not visible above the water-line…

Writing and Social Media and Blogging Platforms

Humans are so brilliant. We take something that is inherently subject to huge amounts of misunderstanding and miscommunication between people and… now instead of writing letters by hand or tapping them on a typewriter and sending them to people, having had a lot of time to re-write, re-think, and hopefully change something that could be hurtful to something more skilfully and supportively written, we create instant communication.

Now people can send emails back and forth, text, use too many social media platforms, and communicate faster than humanly it is possible to mitigate harm. Reputations can be destroyed in a day, not because anyone did anything wrong, but because someone was determined to destroy another person, and they had the online clout to make it happen.

Sadly, so much suffering comes up online without any malice aforethought, without any intention to cause anyone pain. We hurt each other by making silly errors with email settings. By writing things we think are completely innocuous but when read by another to whom those words mean something wholly different from what we meant, the consequences can be disastrous.

Am I Crazy or Brave?

I have to stop and ask myself, given how much can go wrong because of what I write, how easy it is to be misunderstood, to have my words (or even my silences when I withdraw in dismay or fear or simply because I get busy) be taken in a way opposite to what I had intended.

I have to check in with myself and ask, is writing online, waking up and after meditating, opening a metaphorical heart vein and bleeding all over the computer page an act of bravery or is it just insanity?

What am I doing?

I have shared this song before. It speaks to my doubts and vulnerabilities in a way that few others do.

And I have been wrong, I have been right
I have been both these things all in the same night

I am both these things every day. This is what it is to be human. To be both wrong and right. To want desperately with all the heart to be fully with those who are loved and cherished, and to disappoint them, to fail them. To miss the mark for any number of reasons.

So I don’t know if it makes any sense to write like this. I know I have to write. It’s something I need to do. But the cost can be great when words or even what is done in one’s emailbox can go so badly awry.

It’s not safe. The water is not really fine.

I’m here anyway. Hopefully we will find a way, together, to continue to write and read in this place.