“Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood” — John Singer Sargent
For years, I put off starting a newsletter.
Not because I didn’t want to (I did), but because I thought no one cared.
There was no way anyone would care about my surgical dissection of Lauren Groff’s Matrix, or what I thought of Andy’s character in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. There was no way anyone would care about the one time I had a panic attack, or how frustrating it is to try and write a novel.
Who would voluntarily sign up to have random snippets of my life interrupt the clutter of their own?
Surely, no one.
Then, I took Write of Passage, where I learned about the term “intellectual loneliness.”
Curing “intellectual loneliness” spurred me to start creating things in public
Intellectual loneliness is essentially feeling alone in your passions – and I didn’t realize how strongly I was suffering from it until I was surrounded by it.
Everyone in Write of Passage, it seemed, was suffering from some form of intellectual loneliness. All of us had incredibly specific things we were obsessed with – like books or Bitcoin or Spanish mysticism or art – but none of us had an outlet for these things.
Strangely, we found it in one another. Maybe not literally, but in the sense that we affirmed one another’s obsessive curiosities. We helped each other understand that the little things we cared about mattered.
After the course, I launched my Substack (hi) as a space for me to freely riff about all the weird, idiosyncratic things I wanted to explore or muse over. It was like sitting down and having a cup of coffee with myself. What are we curious about today, Grace? What are we thinking about? What are we remembering, feeling, or discovering?
This mental and emotional check-in often doesn’t happen unless it manifests itself through writing. Writing is, after all, just a more nuanced way of thinking. And allowing myself the freedom to mentally “have a cup of a coffee with myself” helped me distill my own ideas and finally dive into creating things (rather than just thinking about creating things).
Now, I’m a writer and a creator on Substack, blah blah blah.
But I’m not writing on Substack for applause – and although I’m endlessly humbled that you’re reading this and I sincerely hope you continue to do so, I’m not necessarily writing for you, either.
I’m writing on Substack because I love to write. I’m distilling ideas on Substack because having coffee with myself is important to me. And ironically enough, the less creators care about what their audience thinks, the more their audience cares about what they have to say.
Creating without care urges people to care
If we edit out all the eccentric, offbeat parts of ourselves to create content we think people want to consume, then we’re just creating a lukewarm manifestation of what we could be creating instead.
But when we create things because of the deep, intrinsic desire to do so – simply because we love to create them, it’s infectious.
True passion walks through walls. It does not apologize or make excuses. It just is, because it has to be. It knows no other way. And it is beautiful because of this nature.
Creating things without caring urges people to care, because raw and unfiltered passion speaks to the soul. It affirms the idea that everyone has those weird, idiosyncratic things they're jazzed about, and that everyone should be chasing those things into the dirt. It affirms the fact that everyone has unique stories to tell, and these stories are the golden thread woven throughout our lives that connect us all together.
I get newsletters in my inbox almost every day from creators who are letting readers peer into their fascinating little worlds.
Like Charlie Becker writing about his experience with ADHD medicine, or Silvio Castelletti writing about how a bank robbery saved him from attending a dreaded lunch with a friend.
These topics are so intimately connected to their individual person that I can’t exactly “relate” to them – and yet, it still makes me feel seen. It reminds me that the little things unique to me do matter, and even if people can’t “relate” to me or might not have a logical reason to care, people still care.
Point is, we underestimate how much people care about the little things. The little things make us who we are.
Thanks for reading The G Word.
As always, if you enjoyed this little window into my life, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend.
G
This would be way too long a comment if I highlighted or quoted everything I loved in it. The whole section about "creating without care" is just singing to my soul. And come on, "True passion walks through walls"!? where do you come up with this stuff? I just plain appreciate your way of seeing and digesting what we're up against in this human challenge. You're my kinda people!!
Grace! So much of this beautiful piece resonates loudly. "[...] the less creators care about what their audience thinks, the more their audience cares about what they have to say", and "True passion walks through walls. It does not apologize or make excuses. It just is, because it has to be. It knows no other way", and finally "The little things make us who we are". You have this prodigious gift of knowing how to put together just the right words to express concepts that are like fog in my head. The minute we start caring about what readers want to read, the magic vanishes and we fold back into uninteresting, flat, standard writing. Thank you for writing this collection of precious thoughts! And thank you for citing me and my bank robbery piece! So honored!