Another Birthday, Another Substack Post
Four years ago, on January 20, 2022, I published a Substack post called It’s my 50th birthday / I wrote a book. Now that book has been out for three-and-a-half years, and if you’re good at math, you can figure out exactly how old I am—and that once again, it’s my birthday. What’s less obvious is that this is somehow my 99th Substack post.
This started as a promotional vehicle for my book. A way to talk about that process and to promote book tour events—an email list with a permanent archive, thanks to the easy-to-use Substack interface (no, they’re not sponsoring this post).
I love writing these every two weeks or so, and I try to keep them fairly low pressure, often viewing them more as long Instagram posts, especially when they’re prompted by a photograph, which is often the case.
Some of these posts have been more serious, and more writerly, like On Gently Crashing My Father’s Memorial, and 24 Hours in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
Many are somehow connected to music, like this one about four massive rock bands who were all between drummers around the same time, or this one about The Song of the Summer.
And some posts simply exist because it felt like time to publish something—to remind myself that even if I don’t always have something important to say or write, it’s still important to write something. Bigger thoughts and pieces have emerged from the most frivolous posts, a reminder that in any creative endeavor, the hardest and most important part can often be just starting it. Just doing something.
What I get out of writing these is hard to quantify, but I know when I stop, I miss it. This is where writing stays casual for me. I don’t have to explain myself too much or justify why a piece exists. It’s a place to try things, to follow small curiosities, and to remember that writing doesn’t always need to have a goal. Sometimes it just needs to exist with a date, a photograph, and a subject line.
I feel the pressure to do something big for post number 100, but please don’t mistake my pressured feeling for a promise. I don’t have a huge plan. Maybe it should just be a short 100-word post? Or a list of my 100 favorite albums of all time. Or 100 reasons why I’ve never really been into sports. Maybe I should pull 100 photographs randomly from my phone and caption each one.
The most likely scenario is that I’ll figure it out last minute, like I usually do. And that’s probably the point. These posts exist because I keep coming back, not because I have a plan. One hundred just happens to be the next excuse.
This Thursday in Los Angeles, I’ll host a live episode of my podcast, Identified, with Matt Berninger from The National as my guest. It’s Thursday Jan. 29 at the beautiful Wrensilva space in West Hollywood. More info HERE.
My guest on Identified this week is Traci Thomas, creator and host of The Stacks Podcast. In this episode, Traci opens up about growing up mixed-race with older parents, navigating loss at a young age, and the impact of her Black and Jewish heritage on how she views belonging.
My memoir is called My Life in the Sunshine. You can order it here, or listen to the audiobook on Spotify.
Hoping to catch Matt in Portland