Well, shoot, then. Might as well post an actual post!

There's a metaphor in here about experiments leading to action or resolution or something, but I'm too brain-fried to figure it out.

Feb 25, 2023

How! Have! You! Been!

After yesterday’s weird Substack chat app experiment, it was so lovely to hear from a bunch of you that I figured I’d take this chilly, cloudy morning in Austin to actually write a real post. Austin! Don’t worry, I didn’t move— I’m here working with Jim Hightower for a couple weeks. I’ll be back in Brooklyn soon.

Fun trivia fact: next month marks 18 years that I’ve been working with Hightower! He’s basically the last client I have in the world of politics-politics, which is entirely due to two factors: 1. He still speaks to everyday people with his work. 2. He’s a genuinely good human with not an ounce of ego getting in his way. Oh, and: 3. He’s hilarious. This makes for longevity in DZ world.

I’ve been completely immersed the last few months in a major transition for Hightower’s work: migrating all of our digital operations and 100,000 print & digital subscribers to Substack. I’ve been joking with my friends that I’ve been leading this work by virtue of being the slowest person on staff to say, “Not it!”, but in truth, it’s actually been really meaty, enjoyable work. I haven’t had to think through so many cascading decisions in years, and while I don’t, overall, miss consulting on the big project work I used to do, it’s been making the rusty gears churn in delightful ways. (It’s also made me unresponsive to texts and emails, more than usual. I’m so sorry!)

Hightower himself is reinvigorated by the work, too—he just turned 80 (!) in January, and being able to liberate him from work that wasn’t serving him as well as it used to has been super inspiring to be part of. He’s reconnecting with the agitators and organizers and troublemakers of social justice, so if you want to catch up with him, drop me a line.

I started writing this newsletter last year as I was realizing that I had missed chewing on big ideas with smart people online—social media platforms haven’t been able to scale those intimate conversations, and as someone who’s gotten a significant amount of socializing from the Internet since 1994, I feel that hole sometimes in very raw ways. Getting back into writing led me to dive into developing a new project around figuring out one’s self-worth in late-stage capitalism, thanks to the support of Jennifer Gandin Le. (If you need to birth a creative endeavor, please run as fast as you can to her inbox; she is your doula, with her extensive knowledge and editing brain, combined with her intuitive and emotional intelligence.) So, while I’ve been working on that, I’ve not been writing here or posting too much in general online. And when I say “working” on it, it’s really that emotionally-churning adventure of thinking, writing, reading, thinking, napping, getting mad, putting it away, thinking, writing furiously, letting it set, feeling like an idiot, swearing off it, missing it, coming back, writing some more, etc. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I’m taking things intentionally extremely slowly with this project. This is something I never do with creative or emotional endeavors, but something deep in my gut keeps saying, “Slow down and let it come out of you.” I’m trying that out, waiting for another message from myself at each juncture, trying to remember the words of my homie Matt, who explained the whole reason we make art. Trying to sort through the voices in my head and determine which ones are really the inner critic trying to keep me from trying new things or growing beyond my current state, and which ones are the gentle inner authorities guiding me on the path, is SOME kinda work, man. For me, a big part of this work is trying to recognize when I’m seeking external validation, versus when I’m acting on that internal, nurturing authority.

Even as I was trying to write that last sentence, a million complications sprung to mind. It’s easy to frame things in very black and white terms: seeking external validation? BAD. Listening to inner self? GOOD. But then the second set of complications come up—the little “who do you think you are” voices that make fun of it all. “Ohhhh, so you’re some kinda FANCY PANTS, huh? All ‘in touch’ and woo-woo, huh? HUH?” Or, “Ohhhhh, so you NEED people to like you, huh? Like some kinda weakling!” You literally cannot win with these guys.

If there’s anything I’ve learned about anything the last few years of therapy and resetting myself, it’s that I have to learn to navigate the world between the black and white edges of it all. I hate the term “gray area,” because it sounds so horribly drab and boring. I don’t want to live in the gray! I want to live in all the colors! I mean, have you seen my hair?! I’ve been learning that those voices of criticism aren’t going to go away, which totally blows, but that I can navigate the space in between them. Living in between the lines, maybe. And living in that space has given me a more solid foundation for when things do zap into more extreme experiences and emotions. I’m not as likely to tip over because the based is a little wider, there’s more room for my footing here. But I still need people to like me, hee hee.

Anyhonk. That’s what I’m thinking about this morning. Let me know how things look from your lens on the world, I’ve missed you.

xoxox
dz