The thing that sent me over the edge was an infographic that read “Normalize ignoring dogs in public.” This showed up at midnight on a Tuesday, on the heels of an ad for a bulletproof dog crate (seriously), CBD dog chews (for her anxiety, which now everyone has) and—I shit you not—K9 Jets, a pet-friendly airline that allows your dog to fly in the main cabin for a very cool $10,000. Instagram figured out that I had a dog and was bringing out the big guns. Except the big guns were still mostly reels of people disrespecting their animals by putting them in stupid outfits.
As I scrolled through this miserable hodgepodge my phone had decided I wanted to see, I thought: This is where the hours of my life are going. My actual life, of which there is only one, and can and will end anytime without warning. I have stacks of unread books, student work to read, and my novel is sitting there, awaiting revisions, but instead I’m letting an aggressive green square chastise me for squealing at a Pomsky.
I’ve gone on social media cleanses before, but never scorched earth. Though I’d always been tempted, I was full of fears and excuses, the same way I was before fully committing to veganism—giving more thought to what other people would think than to what I knew in my heart was right. What about book promotion? What about connecting with the audience? What about building a platform? What about all the bullshit things we’re told to do as writers that detract from the actual writing?
So then, aided by the Venus retrograde in Leo that is currently laying waste to my 12th house, I decided: fuck it.
With the exception of this Substack, my website, and the Black Lipstick Instagram, updated once a week, I have nothing. No presence. No platform. No brand. Nothing.
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