Dear Future Internet Friend,
In 2005 I would come home from 7th grade and update my MySpace Top 8 based on the course of events that had played out at my very dramatic, very artistic, and very difficult middle school. This was middle school in the early aughts. The first iteration of a social media platform where people could customize the colors & fonts on their page, feature music, post grainy photos, write unnecessarily emo blogs, and of course, socially rate their friends (yikes, but also, we still do this but in more subtle ways?). The internet was my shiny new toy and I loved its triumphs and pitfalls equally.
It has been almost 20 years of interfacing with a multiplicity of shapeshifting social media apps and I am tired. Tired of the comparison pangs, illusions, filters, trends, commercialism, and algorithms. Sometimes I miss the MySpace days: writing code to make a glittery Betty Boop background and posting song lyrics without any citation. Sometimes I miss early Instagram: overly sepia filter and 11 likes on a foam late art picture. I miss uncomplicated captions unconcerned with being clever; I miss sincerity without performance. But then again, in the breaks while writing this, I watch Tik Tok like a modern day cigarette break—I wouldn’t go back.
This newsletter is my experiment in moving away from social media and towards the thing I have always tried to do on social media: write. Substack is a publishing platform. It’s not about the layout, logo, email header, or accent color. (But I do love these things. Do you think my accent color should be pink or blue? Or something else?! I love all the colors, helppp.) After years of social media, I’ve become a highly visual creature, forgive me if I’m slow to change.
The point is the writing is the work. Writing about art, love, poetry, tarot, oracle, food, cooking, sacred encounters, movies, books, family, nature, teaching—the stuff of life. Anywho, Just Wanted To Say Hi is a container to creatively explore and experiment outside of the established distortions of Social Media. I offer you this newsletter as a tonic to meet you where you are, as you are. May the words be something to enjoy.
Anywho, Just Wanted To Say Hi.