#10: Learning to Write Again
"it's gonna take awhile."
Happy Super Bowl Sunday (now Monday) to those who observe, and happy 10th issue to this newsletter!
If I had been taking bets on myself in September, this is farther than I would have put money on me to get, though I did not anticipate how good the little clicks and new subscriptions would feel (did you know that you can also like and comment?). When I started this project, I promised myself that I would stay grounded in process over outcome. That I would have a deadline, and do my best to show up for it every two weeks, and write… something. Success would be measured by commitment to the work, not the quality of the work.
Now, admiring the 10 little somethings I’ve written, I feel content, like I’ve climbed a small but mighty hill and am pausing to take in the view. To commemorate the occasion, I thought I would share a peek into my personal process…
A two-week timeline — how this newsletter gets made
Wednesday or Thursday, after an issue has been published: High on 48 hours of clickety-clicks and compliments from my 2 most loyal readers, I think of an idea or something I want to write about for the next issue. I am often on a walk, and so will jot down a sentence or two in my notes app. Eg: “Does it really matter where you feel that in your body?” I congratulate myself for having started working on the next issue, and continue living my life.
Sunday, the week between issues: I mention to my husband or a friend that “next weekend is a newsletter weekend,” and maybe even say, “don’t let me make too many plans.” I applaud myself for naming my boundaries and anticipating my needs! I continue living my life.
Monday or Tuesday before deadline: I tell someone what I’m writing about this week. I act confident, like there is a working draft.
Thursday-Saturday before deadline: It becomes incredibly important that I attack a long list of to-do’s I have been putting off, all of which are “contributing to overall disorganization.” These include but are not limited to:
calling my out-of-town friends to catch up
getting a smog check to complete my car registration
perusing goop travel guides and drafting itineraries for very expensive potential future vacations
general strategizing around the potential future use of airline miles + credit card points to book aforementioned itineraries
researching where to get old skis sharpened and waxed, and is that more expensive than just renting skis, and if so where should I donate these old skis
wondering if my current planner/calendar setup is really working for me or if I could accomplish a lot more with a better organizational system
making random reservations on Resy for 4-6 people and setting cancellation alerts for Horses, just to have
And if I get really desperate:
cooking
cleaning
doing laundry
Sunday (Deadline Day):
exercise, shower, thoroughly take care of my body. Full face mask? Crest whitestrips? Now is the moment for head-to-toe self-care
brunch!!!!!!
Super Bowl party! (ok just today)
maybe call my parents to check in
offer to proofread or edit someone else’s writing
meander through the archives of my favorite Substack email newsletters and read excellent, inspiring work. Compare myself accordingly.
…5pm?
wonder if anyone is doing anything fun
assemble mise-en-place: snacks, cut vegetables, beverages, cute bowls, really set the scene here
…okay, okay. Fine.
Once I’m writing, the discomfort of the words I’m putting on the page being so much worse than anticipated arrives (insert Ira Glass quote here, you know the one) and quickly becomes unbearable. I feel a deep need to self-soothe. I am prepared for this, surrounded by little bowls. I snack and type, snack and type… a sticky, cheesy-popcorn and honey-mustard-pretzel, wipe-down-the-keyboard sort of affair, and build a small collection of half-finished beverages to keep me company.
It was incredible to see how, the moment I returned to any kind of consistent writing practice, all of my old habits showed up as well. The intense procrastination. The primal reach for hand-to-mouth comfort. Then, when I finally get going, the spilling out of winding, run-on sentences and tangents, the abundance of parentheses. The way I hunch and squint until my eyes sting and my back aches and my fingers get very cold. The moments of surprise in which I black in and realize I’ve abandoned the essay mid-sentence and am now shopping for ski goggles.
By now, it is late. There is so much room for improvement, but I’m also tired. The finishing of the essay becomes a race between keeping my eyes open and tying whatever unwieldy thing I have on my screen into something resembling a bow.
You’d think I would learn to leave myself more time.
Early Monday morning/late “Sunday night”: If I tie the bow, then I hit publish at like, 2 or 3am. Knowing no one will see it until the morning, I am then flooded with both alertness and satisfaction from the delightful, motivating, wake-the-fuck-up neurotransmitters that will keep me up and vibing for at least another hour.
Or, as they say on TikTok: the dopamine hits.
Then the timeline starts over.
About that dopamine though —
I write for the same reasons everybody else writes, to connect with people, and also some combination of self-indulgence and self-importance, some affection for my own words. I also write because it is the best way I know to sit with myself, to sort myself out. Of course, I want all the wonderful things that *having written* can bring: acclaim, opportunity, money, a niche but engaged internet community. But I have also found deep fulfillment from just… learning how to write again. Like admiring new muscles a few weeks into a new workout routine, I find myself noticing the small improvements made between issues 1 and 4 and 7. And damn, those are some great drugs.
There are some interesting cognitive processes that underlie what I’m describing. Andrew Huberman, a Stanford neuroscience professor and podcast celebrity, explains the benefits of learning to access rewards from effort and doing in his podcast episode/2.5 hour lecture, “Controlling Your Dopamine for Motivation, Focus, and Satisfaction.”
“Because of the way that dopamine relates to our perception of time, working hard at something for sake of a reward that comes afterward can make the hard work much more challenging and make us much less likely to lean into hard work in the future.
“You have to tell yourself, okay, this effort is great, this effort is pleasureful. Even though you might actually be in a state of physical pain from the exercise, or — I can recall this from college — just feeling like I wanted to get up from my desk, but forcing myself to study, forcing myself and forcing myself… What you find over time is that you can evoke dopamine release from the friction and the challenge that you happen to be in…
“The ability to access this pleasure from effort aspect of our dopaminergic circuitry is without question the most powerful aspect of dopamine and our biology of dopamine.” (1:39:52-1:47:06)
TL;DR - Focusing on outcome will deplete your dopamine supply over the long term. But the internally generated reward that can be derived from process, from staying up late and applying yourself and finishing your silly little essay at 3am, that has the potential to create sustainable neural pathways and reward systems in the brain that allow you to access dopamine through effort, resulting in increased energy and ability to focus.
I listened to this podcast episode over a year ago, bookmarked it, pulled these quotes from the transcript, saved them in my notes app. At the time, I felt sure I had learned an important lesson, that this knowledge would immediately change my life.
“Effort as reward!” I wrote. And also, “effort over outcome + maca root + cold exposure = dopamine!!!”
Instead, as with most lessons, I seem to be learning this one the hard way, taking the scenic route through lived experience, stopping for brunch, and maybe also a Super Bowl party on the way. Good thing I brought my own drugs.
“our brains really do make all the best drugs.”
i'm going to put this on a tee shirt