A Return Home To Writing From the Soul

Opening the Substack home page has felt like a strange homecoming I didn’t know I needed. Getting lost in a rabbit hole of someone’s archive, scrolling through notes that seem oddly personal and vulnerable, and exploring the host of recommended readings like a chat with a librarian, has brought me back to Earth as if I’ve been on a whirlwind jet ride that's taken me far from my world and myself.

In the era of social media algorithms and doomscrolling, I became an unwilling pawn in a game of constantly needing my next fix. It has turned my once-long, patient, reflective attention span, which used to love reading books by an imaginary fireplace, into a scrolling addict who can’t seem to wait the full 60 seconds before jumping to the next video.

What started off as the next monetization scheme to avoid getting an actual full-time job I don’t love has turned into the biggest soul nourishment I didn’t know I needed. Coming onto this app, I tried to write, and the first paragraph felt like a battle. The process of settling on a title infuriating, and without AI, it felt like my brainstorming days were far behind me. And then it decided to kick me in the butt.

Actually, it felt more like a slap in the face. Like the life-flashes-before-your eyes scene in a movie, the images of the writer I was and the writer I wished to become appeared in a way that hit my gut with unrelenting guilt and a yearning to break out of my invisible cage.

It unconsciously chose to remind me, through whimsical prose and raw truths, that maybe there is more to life than the fake world social media apps have created. Maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel of my constant need to feel productive, by scrolling through content that I wish I had made. It has been a long time since I’ve seen people I’ve never met pour their hearts out online for me to read. Like being a fly on the wall in someone else’s therapy session or peeking into a secret diary - two things I hope I never do to anyone in real life. Still, here we are.

The days of feeling everything

I used to feel the world more.

Traveling constantly, I didn’t have time not to feel it. There was always another mountain to hike, an ancient site to explore, and new food to savor. From one place to the next, I learned to romanticize the journey. The long moments of silence on airplanes when the sun shines through the window, and you remember how far up in the air you actually are. The busy, hectic moments in markets when every scent hits you at the same time and you feel like the next Anthony Bourdain, even for a moment. The struggles of times when plans and schedules didn't pan out and you found yourself sitting on the curb of a busy road, suitcase and backpack in a puddle of something you can’t make out in smell or substance.

Those moments raised me. Those moments made me slow down, rewrite, and pay attention. Yet, over the last year, I got digitally kidnapped and turned into a doom-scrolling addict. Partially because of my failing mental state, due to my personal life, partially because of my need to hide from my own feelings - feelings on full display any time I find myself in front of a blank sheet of paper.

And what started as a plan for me to fight the system by being a creator rather than a consumer failed miserably. I wasn't even aware that I had gotten myself there. I just found myself one day unable to write a sentence in my journal because I wasn't sure how to make it sound like a captivating hook. What had I become?

The reawakening of the dreamer

You may assume that my aha-moment on Substack is an exact play into their own algorithm, no matter how noble or truth-seeking it may seem. However, after all this time being a pawn in the doomscrolling game, I would rather fall for the algorithm that puts prose and poems in my face than dance trends and sponsored ads.

The very existence of writers pouring their hearts out on a social-media-like app has shown me that maybe not all hope is lost. That there are still creatives, dreamers, writers like myself, pondering if this is it.

Maybe a renaissance of creativity is slowly waking up after a long nap, and our inner yearnings to create are keeping it from dying in its budding stages. As if there is a shared defrosting taking place in our collective imaginations, pioneered by those of us who have impetuous urges to get ideas down on paper before they float away in the wind.

My personal journey into remembering how to write without ChatGPT and read without scrolling has just begun. And it is a long road ahead. Yet, for the first time in a while, it feels like an online journey of my choosing. No touch-points, no algorithms, just my own curiosity reawakened to rediscover the joy of writing, long moments of reflection, and the familiar view of a page covered in words that didn’t exist before I sat down to bring them to life.

I thank the Substack community for giving me a second chance at a creative way of life online. I hope to snag the attention of a few other scrollers along the way, who, like me, are subconsciously signaling a cry for help, seeking someone to snap them out of their trance.