The Substack Diaries
If you can't read or write everything you might want, have you missed out?
Near the end of The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields lists many things that the book's protagonist hadn't experienced. She had
never once in her many years of life experienced the excitement and challenge of oil painting, skiing, sailing, nude bathing, emerald jewelry …
No one can experience everything.
No one can even experience everything in one category, unless it's a small category.
You couldn't listen to:
all music
all rock music
all rock music of the 1970s (unless maybe if you did nothing else)
You can't visit every place; meet every person; eat every food; play every game; watch every movie; read every book. You may see lists of all the places you should go or books you should read – but will you really do all of that?
And you can't read every post and every comment in every newsletter — or even every popular newsletter – on Substack. Nor can you write everything you might want to say (unless you don't have much to say). The same applies to every podcast you might hear or publish.
Are you missing out?
I think Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) has been both lessened and intensified by the pandemic.
So many events have been cancelled or postponed. You haven't missed out on the Olympics because they haven't happened yet.
But there are still so many things to do – for example, talk with friends, watch streaming videos, catch up on newsletters. There's still not enough time to do even a fraction of them.
I think the way out of FOMO is to realize that *everyone* misses out. There's no way around it.
Hopefully it's enough to know that there are good experiences for everyone – and to help yourself and others have good experiences.
This applies to Substack. You can't read or write everything you might want. But though you'll miss out, you can enjoy what you experience.
I find that the more I write on Substack, the easier it gets. I'm writing two newsletters and started a third. A third might be too much. Maybe the second is too much. But anyway, I'm learning that just diving in and writing is a good strategy.
No need for writer's block – write anything. You can always decide to abandon it and start over. You can revise what you've written before publishing. You can correct or update it later on. If you don't promote your writing well now, you can do better with experience.
For instance, I'll be doing a "This Week in Substack" feature soon. It's literally impossible to compile everything that happened in the Substackiverse in the past week. But I'll make judgment calls and do the best I can. It doesn't need to be perfect; it just needs to be good.
As for reading, perhaps you're like me and subscribe to too much. You won't read it all. But maybe it's better to oversubscribe and figure out later which newsletters you don't benefit from, than undersubscribe and "miss out" on something good. Or you can be content with what you already enjoy and find helpful.
Anyway, you can't do everything.
It's never everything. But it's always something. 🙂