ONE YEAR of desiring this

I'm happy to be here with you AND I have news

A year ago today, I sent my first post to 48 subscribers. It got 193 views.

I’ve been surprised at my enduring passion for this project. This is all I want to do. It doesn’t feel forced. Much, too much, of my creative output feels forced, which is a funny thing to admit as an artist. It’s satisfying to complete hard projects, but it’s also real satisfying to feel engaged in a project that doesn’t feel hard.

Thank you for being here with me. Thank you to friends, family, first-date acquaintances, curious spectators, and strangers. Many of you have read my pieces with kind eyes, hoping to engage, and I’m enormously grateful for that.

Competing in seventh grade Power of the Pen does not an impressive creative writing resume make.

I labor over every piece I publish, partly because of perfectionism and partly because my writing is best on the second, third, or fourth go. I have a knack for speaking aloud but any smoothness is lost on the page. Still, sifting through abstract nonsense riddles is enjoyable and the process feels like making art.

It’s easy to slip into feeling insecure. Besides the obvious white lady blog of it all, the things I want to write about—the things I care about—are weird. I know they are, so if I don’t feel embarrassment creeping in along the edges of my thoughts every now and again, I know it’s time to change course. And a year into this newsletter, our course is steady.

To honor the trust happening here, and for our very special One Year, I’m going to share some history and backstage glances. I’m not a megacorp magazine. The community of Desire Path flows back and forth between us.

Before there was Desire Path, my potential newsletter names were:

• Hopeful Demon

• Helpful Demon (couldn’t decide which)

• Listen In

• Free Diary

• Metal Lamb (a pseudonym I sometimes use)

• Grazces (another pseudonym)

I’m happy to have landed on Desire Path. It’s a term that means a path created where there isn’t a formal byway. A little trek through the dust is more powerful than we realize and I want to carry that power here, bearing my thoughts and trying to start.

Let’s take a look at my dashboard.

Once, after I told someone I wrote a newsletter, they asked quickly, “Okay well how many subscribers do you have?!” I responded, “Wow… I actually don’t know.”

That number doesn’t live with me. How could I measure the success of a project by a number I don’t control? I told them, “No, I don’t know, but it’s not many.” And it’s not. Not in a time when virality is the only commonly visible metric.

I do care about my metrics. I ache for them. But they don’t interact with my work. I’d probably write less if they did.

It’s hard to determine the most and least popular posts. What’s most important: reader count, open rate, or engagement? Substack has determined my top posts based on engagement. The top three are:

1. Poem People: My Sister's Wedding

2. (No. 7) It’s cool not to have a boyfriend

3. (No. 8) Moving

But if I didn’t know this, and hadn’t seen any stats, I would’ve guessed that my top three were riskier ones. Definitely (No.4) Beauty grief and short hair, because a lot of my audience knew me during my bowl cut and I hadn’t shared much about it. Maybe (No. 5) Not? decking the halls because our holiday habits are so set into groves.

Or maybe posts I thought more deeply about. (No. 6) Can you repeat the question?, an inspection of memory, was a meeting point of so many different threads. I talk about Love Island and religion, photography and regret.

The topic choices come from me, they’re not crowd-sourced, so not everyone will be interested in them all. It’s fascinating to see what my readership is drawn to. If you like something, engage with it to let me know. Give it a heart or comment.

I chose to write on Substack because I started reading on Substack. More and more, I looked forward to my Gmail. More and more, I felt my reading stamina return after being tamped down by listicles and infographics. The slowness and effort of reading is a trade for all that’s shared in a piece of work.

In one of their recent articles, Substack writes:

“We believe in a business model that gives readers the power to help shape culture by directly supporting the writers and work they most value, leading to an incentive system that rewards quality and applies upward pressure for excellence in even the smallest of niches. We think that reading can be social without being distracting. And we bet that trusted peer recommendations can drive a discovery system that helps the world’s best readers find the world’s best work—no matter where it comes from.”

A better internet for readers

I have as much brand loyalty to Substack as I have to any other megacorp—some and I resent it. But the platform is easy, ad free. Readerships are devoted and interested. That’s no accident, those are the priorities of the platform.

Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area

Here we are!

[Fin]