It feels like I should do some sort of vision casting here as I write my very first Substack posting — some sort of set up for whatever is going to come next. But the truth is, I don’t know what is going to come next. And that pretty much sums up my experience with life. Over and over again in my 50+ years I think myself heading one direction, only to find myself (sometimes too literally) knocked off the track. And not to put too fine a point on it, but these days I actually do live right next to a busy railroad track.
I don’t know what I will put in this Substack space going forward. For years I have blogged off and on at jennifersearls.com and I expect to continue doing so in much the same way. Which is to say, inconsistently. I have mostly used that space as a sandbox for me to play in. The words I have stored over there are fairly evergreen. I return to them, point back to them, remember where I’ve been and what I’ve been about. That work has never been about building a particular thing and any time I bothered to set up a mailing list and began to capture addresses, I usually stopped writing for awhile, paralyzed by the very thought of pushing my musings out into people’s mailboxes!! (Never mind that they had signed up for them!) The pattern of my solution to that stress has been to stop writing long enough that the mailing list service breaks and requires me to do some repair work (which I’m very capable of doing), but rather than make the repair, I’d simply start writing again, relieved that no one was looking. I never optimized that writing for search engines to find me, in spite of knowing very well how. And I didn’t push my posts out on social media. Mostly I kept my thoughts to myself except for the incongruent fact that I was writing on the INTERNET. Eventually people in my real life would figure out that I was writing again and want to follow along and so I’d set up a new mailing list platform, begin to collect names, and immediately stop writing long enough to let the system break. Rinse and Repeat.
Reflecting on that pattern makes me wonder - What would happen if I began writing in a space that I knew from the outset was designed for landing in people’s mailboxes? I guess I’m about to find out.
One of the things I like about the internet is the way it allows me to find new, interesting things to read, listen to, watch, learn. And so I think I’ll start this Substack exploration by making a list of a few things I’ve found this past week.
First up - a crazy story from Business Insider about a lady making bank in Silicon Valley by selling heritage chickens to rich people. (Which I did not fact check except to find this similar story published in 2018.)
This is perhaps an ironic story to follow with - but if you happen to see this before February 2, I recommend this talk by Mathew Desmond given at Calvin University during their January Lecture Series. You can stream it until the 2nd. If you miss that, you can read his book Poverty, By America. It was one of the most important books I read last year.
The Calvin January Series also leads me to recommend Lydia Dugdale’s talk. I first learned of Dr. Dugdale when Amy Julia Becker interviewed her last summer in an episode titled A Good Life, A Good Death and after listening to their conversation I immediately checked Dugdale’s book The Lost Art of Dying out of the library and read it. Later in the year I bought the book and read it again. I recommend any or all of these avenues to begin exploring Dr. Dugdale’s work, which I highly recommend and will continue doing myself.
I just learned about the Calvin Series last night when I was reading this post by one of my favorite curators of stuff I am interested in. Victoria Jones consistently points her readers toward rich resources on art, theology, and the Christian imagination. I highly recommend signing up for her mailing list and this will certainly not be the last time you hear about her work from me.
It’s been raining a lot lately. This is just our second winter living on this property and we’re still learning the patterns of the land as it changes according to the conditions. Our back field is soggy to depths we never saw last winter, and our cheap heritage birds find it to be excellent hunting ground.
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Like you, I’ve had a blog (actually two) for quite some time. I’ve written in those spaces when it has worked; when there’s been a reason to write. I’ve let them ebb and flow. I could so relate when you said, going back to your writing helps to “remember where I’ve been and what I’ve been about.” Like you, I’m not sure where the writing might go in this space, but in time I think we may figure it out.
You've done it! It's begun. Whatever it is, I know there will be wry humor, smart wordplay, interesting thoughts, and chickens. And all of it will add up to something true. Congratulations on jumping in all the way!