The Never Ending Content Machine

As I contribute my feelings via a piece of digital content.

This is me trying to sort through my thoughts on how to keep up with the neverending treadmill of digital information. And in today’s world, that includes writing and sharing amidst consistent tragedy as our world is literally on fire.

Hillary Dixler Canavan

of

The New Family Table

shared GoFundMe pages from her local community for a single mom, a store that is vital to the Altadena community, and preschool teachers in an intergenerational home.

Michael Estrin

of

Situation Normal

is a Los Angeleno who shared this beautifully honest essay a few days ago and included a list of charities that are helping people recover from the fire put together by LA’s local NBC news affiliate.

lyz

of

Men Yell at Me

shared a list of places put together by Mutual Aid of LA where you can volunteer and donate to help out with the devastation caused by the wildfires.

And

Hunter Harris

of

Hung Up

shared a list of Altadena families that need support.

As a member of our local YMCA, I’ve made a donation to The YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles which is providing free childcare, showers, Wi-Fi, and essential services across LA County.

I set my email autoresponder on December 19th, 2024 to let people know that I would be taking an intentional email hiatus for winter break, that I would be returning on January 6th, 2025.

I didn’t do so great at that. While I didn’t really respond to lots of things, I did impulsively check my email more than I wanted to. I read a few things, got sucked down some rabbit holes, and eventually ended up hiding my phone in my bathroom drawer. I think what really threw me off the most is how the emails (I’m talking the marketing ones and also newsletters I truly enjoy) just did not stop.

I really thought that during the winter holiday season, when it’s darker earlier, it’s colder, and we all tend to be a little cozier in hibernation mode, we would get a little bit of a break from the onslaught of inbox notifications. I guess I was delusionally hopeful that The Internet might take a minute to pause and breathe. Even as I know, understand, and study our digital marketing landscape, I still get stuck on the fact that we can’t give everyone and ourselves a little break.

Let me be clear and say again that there is a chunk of newsletters in my inbox that I love, from writers I admire and learn from. And here I am arriving in your inbox with my own piece of content (preceded by my other newsletter that went out technically while I was still on winter break). I understand that this Substack platform, and many other social media/email platforms, require its users to engage, nurture, and constantly participate.

I know part of this is my feelings of Not Enoughness (not writing enough, not being good enough, etc. etc.), but I also know that the internet has changed the way we share and consume. It’s all about attention.

I loved this from a recent article by

Tara McMullin

of

What Works

:

Manufacturing attention is not the same thing as marketing. You don’t need attention to run a successful business or forge a meaningful freelance career. Figuring out what people are paying attention to and inserting yourself (and your content) into that value exchange may very well produce views, likes, and shares. It might result in sales—sometimes a lot of sales. However, it doesn’t produce the kind of long-term customer relationships that most businesses require for longevity and sustainability.

How do I serve my creative desire and need for something meaningful? What if the constant race for attention is really just producing shallow substance? And most importantly, how do we share and market our work (creative and professional) when tragedy and disaster continue to be present?

Lee Singer asked me what I wanted 2025 to look like. I hope we take a great trip to a place we’ve never been, I think I might be ready to start teaching movement classes again, and I want to write more.

When I think about writing more, I think about the folder on my phone that has 32 essay ideas that are half-started and have never been published. I take a lot of time to work on my stuff. And because of that, I don’t publish a lot. Perhaps I’m holding myself back. Conceivably it’s my Not Enoughness that gets in the way of doing the damn thing. Maybe it’s that the expectations of our digital society have warped my perspective and made me really tired.

When I think about why it is that I write, it is for me personally. Hello, you’re here reading a publication that is entirely personal essays. But it’s also for the recognition, the validation, the connection, and a few other -ion ending words — like attention and appreciation, some real Leo Rising stuff.

Is this for me? Is it to be witnessed? Is it making an impact? Is it strategically for public consumption? Can I remember that sometimes it’s both/and/all?

AND YET. Words and the sharing of words do in fact create the recognition, the validation, and the connection that I, and mostly all humans, seek. That reminder hit me hard and soft as I read these words from

Clara

of

Hmm That's Interesting

during my winter break email hiatus that wasn’t really an email hiatus:

I tend to consider it a tiny miracle when someone is able to sit down and put together some words and decide, in the face of self-doubt and embarrassment and the ever-present fear of failure, to share them.

I’m so glad you’re here and would be even more jazzed if you tapped the <3 to give this a “like” and/or shared it with a friend. I post new entries once or twice a month and you can catch up on my thoughts about being medicore, boobs, regret, mothering, the internet, and finding meaning in it all until the next one arrives.