Changes to my newsletter in 2024

Saying goodbye to Substack.

For an update to my newsletter plans, please see this post from January 16. While I am changing how I use Substack, I’m not leaving after all.

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Hello, friends, and happy new year!

I hope the holidays brought you peace and joy amidst all the chaos of our current moment. Here’s hoping that 2024 has good things in store.

Where I left off in my last post, I shared my #Anti-hustle desires. In keeping with that wish, I spent the last month of 2023 away from Substack and Instagram. I needed to clear up space in my brain to think.

I know a lot about what I don’t want—I don’t want to hustle, I don’t want to spend all day looking at my computer and phone, I don’t want to contribute to the increasingly nonsensical noise that bombards all of us every day in the form of social media posts, blog posts, podcasts, etc., I don’t want to participate in the economies of disposable crap—but what exactly do I want?

To be honest, I’m still figuring that out. It turns out one month was not enough to answer a question that big. But I do have a start at any answer:

• I want to be more present in my real-life, in-person communities

• I want to continue to develop my technical skills as an artist

• I want to resume my fiction-writing practice and let it be as slow as deliberate as it needs to be to create something worth reading

In pursuit of my goal to continue wrestling my attention span back from the noisy internet so that I can create the types of work I most admire, I have decided to step away from Substack. I joined because I heard this was a place of thoughtful, considered conversations, a place where the quality of writing and the quality of thought behind the writing were the priorities. That may have been the case when this platform was new, but now it seems to be just another social media platform that rewards the same things all social media platforms reward.

I am grateful for the connections I have made here and thankful to all who have taken the time to read my posts over the past few months. I have never had any negative personal interactions on here. People who respond and comment are always very kind. The reason for my departure is not about the people but about the platform itself and the way it is pushing certain kinds of engagement that do not interest me.

To that end, I will be moving forward with a traditional email newsletter in which I share information about upcoming events and new work. It will not be blog-style, but rather purely practical information sharing. I will not be setting a publication schedule. Instead, I will send messages only when I have something specific and timely to share. I don’t anticipate that happening more than once a month, and often it will be less often than that.

If you wish to continue to receive my occasional email newsletter, no action is needed on your part. I will be migrating my list in the coming weeks. If you would prefer not to get said emails, you can unsubscribe from my Substack and I will totally understand. Declutter one’s inbox is always a valuable thing to do.

Best of luck in 2024, my friends. Be well, be joyful, be creative!

Cheers,

Diane