First Newsletter of the New Year

Happy New Year dear newsletter readers...here we are again. I hope everyone had a solid holiday and did whatever you felt you needed/wanted to do for Christmas/Holidays and New Years Eve. Regarding New Years Eve, I sense and have felt in the past there is always a kind of social pressure to go out and get real weird with the night. When I was younger (I’m 36 now) there was no question myself and friends would be hitting some social gathering, be it a club, restaurant, bar or all three. This year though felt different. There was no pressure. Frankly, there was literally zero desire this year so my new wife and I (we were married Christmas Eve) decided to have a simple dinner at Berreta in the city (meal was ok) then grabbed a few drnks with some friends who we rarely see a few blocks from our house. The energy of the night was nothing bombastic, nothing forced, maybe because we held no initial expectations of the night to begin with. Funny how expectations can do that.

Being a new year, the wife and I naturally laid out some joint and personal resolutions. Do you still do that? I would be curious to know if you have any and if you’d be willing to share them in the comments section. For us, it's mostly about decreasing the amount of digital things we have in our lives, be it taking the TV out of our room or leaving phones way the hell away from where we sleep. I’ve done it the last few days and goddamn, the positive effects of better sleep and simply better focus are insane. I'm a right addict (and probably have undiagnosed ADHD) when it comes to the phones. I can't help myself, so removing it completely from the bedroom, table, etc. is going to be a hard push for both of us. For me and my resolutions, I've made a few which I will get into next.

Before we do that though I feel an urge to say I’ve noticed some Substack newsletters/profiles read/appear more like job interviews or agent pitches than anything creative which…is really the purpose of this whole thing (at least for me). That is no my goal here, as what I’m interested here is expression, the sharing ideas, and collaboration. If that leads to something for me “professionally” or my “career” so be it. This place for me (at least for the moment) is really for me to scream a little bit…experiement…explore…very much like my poetry page on IG. So, from here on out tools like Grammarly or any editing tools will be gone, though I will do my best to keep things readable. So much of my everyday writing - non-creative or not - feels more and more orderly and in line and not messy and, to be frank, I grow weary of the great effort to continue coloring inside the lines.

I’ll divulge more in a quote from "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism" by Yanis Varoufakis that I’m basing Sunday’s essay on as it feels, at least in this moment, to be part of a much bigger feeling some people are having.

This week:

Resolution 1 - READING

Resolution 2 - NOVEL WRITING

Resolution 3 - Figure Out How to Be a Better HUSBAND

Essay intro to “UNTITLED” but loosely connected to "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism" by Yanis Varoufakis

Resolution 1 - READING

This is a big one for me and one that actually, seeing and hearing and reading from many of my friends/people online, is linked to the phone/social media more than I/we would like to admit. I used to be an avid reader, devouring swaths of books all the time that truly felt like ascension. Hard to describe in words now but this year, I’m taking the act of reading seriously, not only because I think it’s a direct revolt against all forms of social media/news/phone addiction but also a way to tap back into why I originally got into all writing and (hopefully) making my work this year that much better for myself and you, dear reader. My plan is to read 50 pages a day which should result into a book a week. I’m using a little plastic timer to break up reading persiods into 30 minutes to walk around, stretch, etc. to keep me on track. Here is another interesting clip from David Foster Wallace on reading likely back in the early 2000’s.

Resolution 2 - NOVEL/CREATIVE WRITING

I’ve been writing “Actor: A Novel in Three Acts” since probably…2015? I think I started writing while with my longtime girlfriend (who, as far as I could tell, had no idea/interest in what I was doing with it) and have since re-wrote and edited through various workshops - as well as an entire MFA thesis - only to still be working on it. This year, that all changes as I’ve set up a schedule to work on it after work (where I write all day about finance, corporate news, the economy, and more) at least three days a week. No telling if it will get finished this year but that is not really the point…the point is start into it again praying to the Gods of Mount Parnassus the thing eventually gets done. Plus, my Dad urged me to finish it this year which naturally plucked at my heart strings. No better motivation than fears of dissapointment.

Resolution 3 - Figure Out How to Be a Better HUSBAND

I can be a nasty bastard sometimes (most of the time)…always looking to turn a relatively calm, easy moment suddenly rife with argument…poison…unease. Not in a malicious way but to stir things, shake things up. I imagine it gets exhausting.

Just this morning I think I got riled up about something and obviously, felt the need to get my wife, Greta, riled up about the same thing. It was likely something to do about national politics (Trump, etc.) or maybe even something to do with local politics (I am stewing on an essay now about mayor-elect Daniel Lurie who I have some feelings about). As a newly minted husband, one of the aspect of my job is to know when to cool it. Me ranting and raving about something at 8AM on a Tuesday about nothing that has to do with Greta’s morning English Breakfast tea, two eggs, and piece of lightly buttered toast is not lending to her happiness which, as I’ve been told, is one of my main responsibilities.

So, that’s one thing I’m working on as I’m sure, and have been told, there are many others. The good thing about promising to be with someone forever, there is time. Not all the time in the world but enough to make mistakes, listen, communicate clearly, and then change - however painful or uncomfortable (we’re taking the TV out of bedroom this weekend and I can already feel the withdrawals of that easy, lazy digital comotose machine starting) - to hopefully a better end.

If you have any suggestions for me, I will read any and all comments.

Quote from "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism" by Yanis Varoufakis

In this passage towards the end, Varoufakis is addressing his late father, envying “the way (he) lived” as the “epitome of the liberal individual” in contrast to the technologically bound young people of today. Essay around this idea set for this Sunday’s paid newsletter.

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"For young people in today’s world, even this small mercy (fencing of a portion of one’s life to remain “autonomous, self-determining, free) has been taken away. Curating an identity online is not optional, and so their personal lives have become some of the most important work they do. From the moment they take their first steps online, they suffer like Movatar (In Yanis Varoufakis's interpretation, Movatar was a robotic exoskeleton suspended by a cable in an art space near Sydney, characterized by awkward, jerky movements that symbolized the future relationship between humans and technology) from two perplexingly contradictory demands: they are taught implicity to see themselves as a brand, yet one that will be judged according to its perceived authenticity. And so before posting any image, uploading any video, reviewing any movie, sharing any photograph or message, they must be mindful of who their choice will please or alienate. They must somehow work out which of their potential ‘true selves’ will be found most attractive, continually testing their own opinions against their notion of what the average opinion among online opinion makers might be.”

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