A User's Guide, of sorts

What's this blog even about, anyway?

Mar 01, 2024

So I’m coming up on three years with this little blog of mine, and I guess that’s kinda neat. I haven’t been very consistent in my posting (though lately i’ve tried to make sure something gets out on Fridays, and that schedule has worked okay for me). And I really, really haven’t been consistent in what I write about or how I promote what I write, but.. I’m not going to punish myself too much for those failings. Writing anything at all is hard enough, and I figure if there’s any coherent through line in what I say here, it’ll become evident over time.1

But what is this blog about, exactly?? That’s what I’d like to try to answer in this post. Maybe for those of you who are newer subscribers, you’ll see what sorts of things I’m trying to get at with my writing. Maybe this post can act as a Here’s What Nigel Believes kind of mini-manifesto, and if I’m able to articulate why I write and what I mean to say, maybe I’ll be able to write better stuff in the future. Anyway, with all that throat-clearing out of the way…. How would I catalog what I’ve written so far? I guess I’d start with …

Vulnerability

First and foremost, I like to write about vulnerability. If Belle & Sebastian were a blog, I’d try to channel that. What I mean is.. I write in order to get at that space where conflicting things are both true, something is both uncomfortable and not right, but also honest and relatable and reveals a truth about ourselves we’d often rather hide. Sometimes this means writing about stuff I just don’t know how to articulate when I’m talking to someone in person. Sometimes it’s more of a memoir-type post that tells a story about a time I fucked up, or I’m still stuck wondering whether it was really a fuck up. “Vulnerability” to my mind is about the space where we admit to ourselves that what’s “true” might not be true for everyone. What’s the “right” thing to do might depend on context, and it might be unknowable. Maybe something is profoundly cruel or unfair or broken, and it just *is* — and there’s no changing it. How do we learn to sit with that reality and accept it?

I guess what I mean is.. sometimes I want my writing to just say I’m a thoughtful person, damnit — with feelings! And I know you are, too, and if we could find a way to acknowledge that, to see that vulnerability in each other, wouldn’t we both be better off??

I started this blog during the pandemic, and that was a particularly vulnerable time for all of us, no doubt. But I wanted a place where I could articulate what exactly was so hard about those really bad pandemic years, what was so deflating and disorienting about it all, but also what it revealed about who we are and how we react to adverse circumstances. There was a lot of sitting in my feelings and just owning that, and I started writing, and I’d like to think that it’s been good for me, but .. who knows.

Looking back through my archives, some past posts that I think fall into this category are:

Gay Stuff

Being a gay person, I also try to write about gay stuff. I think it’s important to “write what you know,” when it comes to this sort of topic, and so again.. these are kind of vulnerable, thinking-on-paper type posts about the gay experience and where we all are as gays here in our 30s or 40s, living in a big city, as we do. Note I say “gays” here and not “LGBTs” because.. well, frankly that acronym is a bit of a kludge, but more importantly I don’t think it’s right to just assume that the experiences of gay men automatically translate to Ls, Bs, and Ts. There’s no reason why it would work that way. Gay men are a whole complex, contradictory ecosystem unto themselves, and there’s a lot there to mine. Some movies really do a good job of exploring aspects of gay life, and I like to call those out when I see them. Some books and tv, too, I guess. Looking (2014-2016) deserved a better run than it got.

Gay culture changes so quickly, and I think it’s a little hard to write about for that reason. Like.. yes, there’s certainly some carry through from the 80s and 90s to now. The culture has its familiar tropes and patterns. But in other ways.. particularly when it comes to what “acceptance” means, and how we see ourselves fitting in or not… it’s just not even the same universe. Change that’s happened that fast is bound to cause some confusion and angst and, yes, cynicism, I think. To wit:

I asked Dall-E to make an image for “vulnerable gay millennial writer who is writing a blog” and, well.. this is one AI that understood the assignment.

Culture & Vibes

Like everyone else on the internet, I like writing about modern culture and what’s cool and what we’re all thinking. This is always the most perilous of writing, because I think it can come off as either hackneyed and amateurish, or downright Seinfeldian (“What’s the deal with TikTok???” “Have you seen what The New Yorker says the kids are up to these days? Boy I dunno!!”)

Some of these posts are a little on the ranty side of things — “This thing that everyone says they like is actually bad and here’s why.” But those are a lot of fun to write, when they come together properly. I’m always quick to share a good screed when I can come up with one. I don’t want this blog to be that all the time, by any means. I’d be bothered if my “brand” (oof, “brand,” cringe word) were just “Nigel — he writes about stuff that sucks.” But these three posts definitely go hard in that direction.

Other posts in this vein are more about getting older, about trying to maintain a healthy relationship with technology, about being “in” the culture but not too much. Increasingly I find myself writing/thinking about how I want to grow older — I don’t exactly feel “old,” but I know I’m not “young” anymore — so what’s the foundation I should be building for true middle age? Should I be reading more? How can I be more deliberate about how I spend my time? There’s no sense in looking back on the past and asking if I made the “right” choices — the choices are made, and my life here and now is what’s resulted from that. But .. how did that happen? Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans and all that, I know. But there still has to be a moment when you pull back and try to make sense of it all, surely. I’ve sorta-kinda tried that with these posts.

Fiction (maybe)

I hesitate to include this as a blog topic, because it’s definitely aspirational on my part. I have one (1), solitary piece of fiction up on this blog at the moment (it’s here). It’s very gay and very 30-something-gays-living-in-the-city, and I’m honestly a little surprised that I even finished it, but it’s out and I posted it and I’m reluctantly ok with it. I’d really like to work on writing more fiction in that style, but… oof. It’s exhausting! And talk about being vulnerable! It’s the one type of writing that’s always banging around in my head with thoughts and scenes and tiny little half-plot lines, but pulling all of that together to actually *say* something is just super challenging.

I’d like to think I might write more gay fiction in the future. Not gay romance, certainly. Much respect to those who are able to do that type of writing, but I know myself. And anything I put together is just going to have a lot more Wells for Boys sentimentality in it. Is it cringe? Yes, probably. But that’s just how vulnerability works, man.

More Dall-E images of tortured gay bloggers. I love it so much.

What We’re Not Gonna Do

To be clear, I’m a a regular old government lawyer in my day job, and I don’t plan to change that any time soon. This writing bit is a hobby, not something I think I could ever do full-time, and that limits how much of myself I’m really willing to pour into what’s here. Somewhat relatedly, some topics I am just not ever, ever going to write about here or anywhere else include:

Bathrooms and who gets to use which bathrooms
Gender affirming care for minors
Nazis and platforming of Nazis on Substack
DEI initiatives and antiracism
Wokeness generally
Cancel culture

Now, don’t get me wrong — I read about some of these topics a lot! There are corners of the internet that are powered almost exclusively by the words found in these explanatory/ranty/hand-wringy essays. There are even some really good amateur Substack posts that go into some really worthwhile arguments on all of this.

The problem is that these topics completely unravel that whole vulnerability ethos I was talking about above. People know what they think on all these things and we’re all seeking out the person who will say our own thoughts back to us in the most palatable or interesting way. I *do* care about politics generally. I care about it a lot. But I’m less and less interested in writing about politics, because everything (everything!) seems to reduce to “reasonable people who are open to nuance and concessions and compromises” vs “absolutists and dogmatics who want to will the world into being a certain way despite ample evidence that it can’t be that way.”

That, and writing about these topics is just so often clout chasing and engagement-bait. To the extent Substack has a “brand” that it’s actively trying to cultivate, the platform seems to be a sort of “Twitter, but longer, and for smart people.” And I think yelling into the void about the topics listed above is so often a way people draw attention to themselves, much like folks often used to do on Twitter. I can’t bring myself to do it.

I’ll admit, the one exception I make for myself when it comes to this politics/culture war prohibition is with guns. Maybe some day I should write something more meditative that gets at why gun politics are so, so different from everything else. But they are. It’s just the way it is. This post starts to get at some of that.

And so on ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway. that’s what I’m trying to do here. I like to be vulnerable and questioning where I can. I try to avoid strident politics. I think cultural criticism is really interesting. If we were to all have a dinner party, this is the stuff I’d want to talk about. I want to hear what others have to say about these sorts of topics.

Beyond that, I like cities, and running and meditation and bicycles and mystery novels and Europey travel and coffee.. but that’s all like .. dating profile stuff. It’s not really a description of how I act when I write, or what sort of dialogue we might have if we were talk about things here.

I like that Substack is building itself out with a Notes feature and DM’s and somewhat Twitter-esque functionality. Twitter is a flaming hot pile of garbage that I’m glad I’ve finally managed to leave behind, but I do like the little mini-version of it that exists on Substack. It’s more work to post here, and it requires a lot more thought, but I get way more out of reading what’s posted here than I do elsewhere. Substack is helping me discover some smart, non-political and non-shitposty corners of the internet that I really like.

I don’t know how to grow this little blog or even if I want to. What would the audience really be? Substack keeps sending me emails about how to go all in on being a writer who markets myself so I can “curate a worldview.” Is that really what I’m doing here?? I don’t think so. I write in order to express my thoughts more fully and with more precision than I otherwise would. I write to connect with people. That’s about all I can say about it.

Nigel Writes a Blog

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