Hello in There
Reactivating this thing. Tell me what you'd like to read about! Plus: my favorite Substacks, and teasing out the 'why' in 'why write?'
Hello, beautiful subscribers of Things That Should Exist! It’s been a while.
My last post was January 23rd of this year. Looking back at my posts, it appears that I stopped publishing with any regularity in June 2023.
While I think TTSE is still in it’s “pre-fans” era, I feel like I owe you an explanation as to why I stopped publishing here.
In short, I stopped publishing because because I was tired.
I didn’t feel like I was “getting anywhere” with TTSE. It’s entirely subjective I know. I still have big dreams for this newsletter.
Since June 2022, I have also been in the process of trying to land my next tech job. More specifically, a software engineer role.
It’s been tough. The market for junior developers has cratered with AI’s usurpation of white-collar jobs. In my experience, the market for remote work has changed a lot in the last five years.
The next section is about my journey for the past two years. Feel free to skip it to read about my plans for this newsletter going forward, and a shortlist of my favorite newsletters, which I read near daily and are a huge inspiration.
Life Since 2022
I’m pretty sure I’ve covered this whole arc in previous posts. Since I haven’t written here in a year in a half, it feels like it bears repeating.
I was laid off from a six-figure tech job in 2022.
It was a bummer to be laid off, but it was also a blessing.
I received a small severance, and received unemployment through March via New York state’s SEAP program.
SEAP was a boon. The state set it up to help those recently laid off start a small business. I still find it kind of hilarious that I applied with this newsletter as my small business, but I was accepted nonetheless. At the time, SEAP doubled the length of my unemployment.
My goal was to work on TTSE to try and make it an income stream. I planned to work on this newsletter full-time until my unemployment ran out.
In April 2023, my unemployment ran out. I guess my goal of creating a livable side income from TTSE was pretty lofty. I probably should’ve given myself more time. It was really stressful at the time, writing 3-4 long-form posts per month, strategizing weekly on how to grow the newsletter, and trying to figure out ways to engage my readers here.
One thing that has been really cool–people have been subscribing despite the fact that I haven’t written much at all here for more than a year!
It makes me feel like the writing I’m doing is meaningful.
In June 2024, I left Brooklyn and moved to Western Massachusetts, to a small town near Amherst. It’s taken me a few months to settle, but I finally feel like I can do creative work again–publishing to Things That Should Exist included.
I do believe that publishing my writing is the thing that I’m supposed to be doing. Like, in my gut, this is what some divine force wants me to do.
Maybe grandiose, but I feel deeply this is one of the things I can contribute to the universe, to this planet.
It’s woo-ey, yeah. But I have a feeling this is what I’m supposed to be doing.
It’s hard. Most of the time it seems like no one is reading or listening.
But I feel I should keep doing it no matter what, and eventually it will work out.
Maybe?
I keep coming back to, “It feels right”.
Rethinking The ‘Why’ of TTSE
So now I’m back…but why?
Why publish at all, if it’s unrewarding, hard, sometimes stressful?
I realized that I answered this question in the previous section. It feels right is reason enough. Still, I have some reservations.
For instance, I have a strong allergic reaction to the term “content creator”.
It’s an odious term. What a sad thing - to have someone’s life and work reduced to “content”. I do think someday, the harmful and monopolistic tech companies that have inserted themselves as the middleman in so much of our daily lives will be dis-inter mediated.
It’s only a matter of time until some person or small team creates open source versions of Facebook, Instagram, Google, and even Amazon–even Substack.
We don’t need them anymore. I only keep Facebook for a few useful groups (Buy Nothing, Queer Exchange Western Mass), and Instagram to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances.
There is both a cultural shift happening where people are waking up to/getting tired of social media platforms and the United States government is starting to legislate and break up these monopolies.
The developments in the latter sphere–antitrust legislation, mostly being done by Lina Khan’s FTC–is covered in Matt Stoller’s excellent newsletter, Big, which I’ve included in my list of “daily reads” below.
I have no association with Matt’s newsletter, other than being a fan. Reading Big gives me hope.
That’s thinking about content production and the internet from a macro lens. Zooming back into to my experience, as someone who publishes writing online (i.e. “makes content”), the thought that I’m participating in the “content industrial complex” makes me not want to put anything online at all.
Each of these posts takes 4-8 hours. At least on Substack, the content I produce is something I own, and I can always migrate my newsletter to another platform like Ghost, Mailchimp, etc.
This is not something you can do on Facebook, IG, TikTok, etc. In fact, they pay behavioral scientists, UX designers, and other engineers hundreds of millions of dollars per year(possibly more), to continually design new ways to keep you locked into the platform.
I recommend Jonathon Crary’s book, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, if you think about these things too.
Anyways, I digress. I can’t let my distaste for the content game bring me down, or keep me from creating.
It’s like the dictate about being an artist: if you’re really an artist, you create no matter what. You can’t help but make things.
For this newsletter I have Two Big Dreams
One, I have been writing about here for 2-3 years, since the beginning of Things That Should Exist. I would define that dream as collectively-owning and stewarding land with friends and family.
I think bees are a great model for that. They are egalitarian, and crucial keepers of ecological balance on this planet by way of redistributing many different pollens across regions.
Here’s a meme of two bees sleeping together in a flower.
For the past five years, I’ve heard some version of the phrase, “I just want to run away with my friends and live in the woods.”
I do believe it’s still possible. I think it’s entirely possible for 5-10 people to pool their money and lines of credit to buy some land somewhere in this country. And I believe it’s possible for this hypothetical group of people to get along well enough to make such a project work for the long term.
I am always down to talk about this. Reply to this email if you want to talk about this.
In a way, the dream does feel over, in a way. Starting a “land project” with friends seems harder, with increasing land prices, stagnant wages, and the formidable ambient stress we are being forced to adapt to (the War in Gaza, Covid never really ended, climate disasters, The Election).
It is a very stressful time to be alive. Kind of a “wait-and-see” time.
While we are waiting, let us plan, coordinate, and share resources.
We could buy some land together and live on it! Even part-time would be cool.
I am still looking for people to do this with, while I job search and, ostensibly, save money to buy a piece of land that I can share and co-steward with friends and family.
And the Second Big Dream, we’ve covered in detail in this post. The Second Big Dream is to make a living from my writing.
These two big dreams are why I write, and why I’m starting Things That Should Exist back up.
Sure, living on land with friends sounds nice but…
Alright so other than living in community and living a way less stressful lifestyle, one where you get to see your friends all the time, I’d say that it’s worth considering starting to plan on how you’re going to buy land and live on it with people you like because of rising rents and housing prices.
Housing costs have been going up for the past 35 years. They peaked in the 80’s for a time, came back down, but you could say housing is more expensive than it’s been in nearly a century.
Some anecdotal data:
Parents bought their house for $70k. That same house is worth 10x that now.
My first apartment was a 1-bedroom in the heart of Austin for $600/mo.
Since then I’ve watched my rent increase to up to $1500/mo for a 1-bedroom in Queens, New York.
And yes, that’s in New York City, but because of algorithmic rent pricing software like RealPage, rents are essentially the same across the country.
More anecdotal data:
A one-bedroom apartment in Western Massachusetts averages around $1200, which is similar in Dallas, Austin, upstate NYC. Normally the less desirable cities and small towns would have substantially cheaper rent. Not so anymore.
For those interested in reasons why the rent is so high (*cough* RealStar, and the rest of what is effectively a cartel in the housing industry, such as Invitation Homes), I’d recommend Matt Stoller’s excellent newsletter, Big, where he reports on the world of monopolies and antitrust litigation.
I learned about the FTC’s litigation against RealStar from Big, and I’ve come to rely on Stoller’s newsletter. Also, did you know that Michael Jordan is an anti-monopolist?
Stoller’s Big Tech on Trial series(with reporting by Yosef Weitzman), which was about the FTC’s case against Google, was also excellent.
My Favorite “Daily Read” Newsletters
There are a few newsletters that really nail the why of “Why write? Why publish an independent newsletter?” for.
In no particular order, they are:
Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter - prophet and visionary of American culture and our political landscape. Fearless. Her tag for her newsletter is “Non-fiction horror stories”. Kendzior’s books are incredible as well – I recommend The View from Flyover Country. They Knew is also really good.
Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study. Like Kendzior, AHP is also brilliant. Petersen was a senior culture writer at Buzzfeed in the 2010’s. Her writing on “infrastructures of care” is inspiring and instructive. I don’t know if it’s just my circles and my friends, but it really seems like millennials and younger do not know how to take care of each other. I could speculate as to why, but it’s something that I notice daily. I’ve recommended Petersen’s blog and writing to many–we need more writing like that, and it’s writing that I am attempting to do here.
Ted Gioia’s The Honest Broker. Ted Gioia writes about music and culture the way I want to write about music in culture. He has numerous books about music, mostly about jazz, but I like his newsletter best. For me, one of his seminal posts is “14 Signs Your Are Living in a Culture Without a Counterculture”.
Joshua Citarella’s Blog. Citarella is an artist and leftist who lifts weights and studies how teens become radicalized online, among other things. He recently started a podcast, Doomscroll, where he interviews other “cultural producers”. It is excellent. I’m paid subscriber to his Substack, mostly because I follow his weightlifting plan, which I’ve really enjoyed following for the past eight weeks. A fascist lifted today. Did you?
That’s all for this week. Please consider sharing this post or becoming a paid subscriber if you liked this post.
Oh, I also started a new Instagram account where I draw billionaires.
It’s called @idrawbillionaires.
