Friday JOMO: Why You Won't Find Me on Substack Notes
You are invited to my island instead. Plus: vote on our next book club pick!
Reader and all-around lovely person Dorothy suggested trying a "Friday JOMO (Joy of Missing Out)," which I thought was an excellent suggestion. Here is why I am (mostly) skipping out on Notes, the new Twitter-like feature on Substack.
I have been feeling more and more like I want to live the Tove Jansson life I've always dreamed about — not necessarily on a remote and rocky Finnish island like she did, but somewhere in nature with no wifi or smartphones or tablets. A place of absorption and slow-moving time, where my thoughts could drift, like a leaf bobbing down a stream. Lately my mind has felt more like a municipal water system, all dark, rushing pipes and relentless efficiency. It's exhausting.
There is so much '90s nostalgia around these days, it's hard for me to not think about my own '90s life, that narrow gap of late-teenager-hood when I was full of big dreams yet only had dial-up internet. Escape couldn't be found via scrolling — could you even scroll on a web page in 1995? — or falling into Wikipedia holes. I escaped by literally leaving my house, by spending time with friends, or by creating: music, zines, weird videos, whatever.
As I get older, I'm thinking more about how I spend my time, and if spending it a certain way feels generative or extractive. Sometimes social media can feel like both. I get something fulfilling from it — a new friend, a funny joke! — but more and more, it drains me. I blink and where did the last 30 minutes go. I suppose it is a kind of escape, but to where?
Substack Notes is very new, so it unfortunately has a sort of hollowness that calls attention to its structure. Maybe at midnight it'll be a raucous room crammed with music and a sweaty crowd, but right now at 6pm it's kind of empty and you keep bumping into the same people. Those people aren't quite sure what they should be talking about — themselves? the world outside? how they aren't sure if this space will be overrun with white supremacists very soon? — and the hosts keep urging everyone to invite their friends.
I've heard some people say they like being able to discover new writers to follow, and they feel more a part of a Substack community. Some people are just happy to have a possible Twitter alternative. I get that. I appreciate new avenues to share my work. But right now I don't want to spend my time in this confusing room, hoping it will someday be a place I want to be. For better or worse — and to be honest, it's probably worse for my metrics — I want my empty, rocky island. I want my stream. I want to lie outside, my face turned up to the sun till my metrics are bleached out of my brain and all I can see are the real things in front of me.
Are you on Notes yet? Hahahahaha. (But truly, if you like it, feel free to tell me why it’s working for you!)
Poll: What Book Should We Read?
Once again, the majority of readers are fine with either type of book I proposed in last week's poll, so I picked one of each — a memoir and a cookbook — and decided that both would be by Korean American authors. Like last time, I will be hosting a one-hour live Zoom discussion (in June), open to paid/supporting subscribers only, and will also have a discussion post here on the newsletter, so please vote if either of those options interests you.
Here are descriptions from the publishers, as well as awards and accolades for each book.