Admitting How Embarrassing This Substack Has Become

and some other stuff

The existence of this newsletter has become a personal shame of mine. Entirely self-imposed; I’m sure no one else who has (miraculously) remained a subscriber is kept up late at night at the thought of Brianna’s Digest, which has gone through at least two name changes now, and how many different times I’ve tried to resurrect it by turning it into different things. About four years ago – Jesus Christ – it was first released to the world, themed and titled “That’s Weird,” where I was writing an unclear number of articles about “weird,” “niche,” “outsider” art per month but was more just like, horny-posting and bemoaning shitty comedies that I thought were actually good. Maybe at one point or another someone with actual knowledge of outsider art saw my Substack and winced – again, here I am creating people in my head.

Anyway, that original arrangement was difficult to maintain. I had outsourced an editor and an illustrator, and very quickly it became that not only could I not afford to indulge in these kinds of expenses for a free blog but I just didn’t really have the drive to keep writing deeply researched essays for zero money. Maybe some of you can do that kind of stuff for the love of the game, but I felt like I had done my time in the gulag, writing passionately and painstakingly for free. I was bit by the money bug, but who can blame me… in this economy.

So, I put “That’s Weird” on hold for about a year or so and then returned by renaming it “BriZigs LLC.” This is the iteration of the blog that embarrasses me the most. I revived it with an obnoxious writing voice that really wasn’t my own, forcing myself to sound like some of the more successful pop culture bloggers I read, trying to write at least one or two articles on a weekly basis and ultimately churning out shit that I hated and that made me feel bad. I introduced paid tiers of subscription, which a handful of very kind people actually signed up for, and I published a mixture of posts that were free and paid. This had diminishing returns, however, and I think it was a bad idea to have introduced it so soon before establishing enough of a following. While I thought that introducing paid posts would encourage subscribers, it seemed only to dissuade them. Shocking: people prefer to read stuff for free.

My boyfriend at the time urged me to keep writing, saying that the only way to find my audience and get the blog to a place that got it going was to just keep at it, no matter how shitty the writing was, no matter how many subscribers were reminded that they were subscribed to me only upon seeing my name in their inbox every time I posted a new blog and realizing that they didn’t want to be subscribed to my shit anymore. I just had to keep going, and eventually something would stick. I don’t think he was wrong, at all. But then he dumped me, and you know what? I didn’t really have to listen to him anymore.

Begrudgingly, though, he was right. It’s a mentality I’m still trying to engage with while simultaneously allowing myself to go at my own pace, to write things that I’m happy with and that aren’t agonizing to see published with my name attached. I’m very much not against the idea that one has to get through their bad ideas before they can find the good ones – a real gold nugget of creative advice I first latched onto out of Matt Farley’s self-published The Motern Method. In the end, I felt that there had to be a happy medium of writing consistently and writing things I liked, regardless of my standards of “quality.” But I did place the blog on yet a third hiatus after my breakup (now, our story is in late 2023) and at that point I thought it was the end of BriZigs LLC, That’s Weird, or whatever. I was deeply depressed and I had stopped pitching to outlets entirely. I had no drive to write, something I still struggle with, and so I did not see a universe where this newsletter could come back. Yet I refused to actually delete the blog. Even after my apartment burned down (a story for another time, probably), and my drive to be creative was even more drastically quelled to near zero, I always kept this blog in the back of my mind, turning it over every now and then like a worry stone. I did feel that it was dead, on the surface, but subconsciously I refused to allow it a proper burial.

This reluctance to mercy kill BriZigs LLC was self-evident in how, during this yet third hiatus, I renamed the entire Substack “Brianna’s Digest,” which had been the name of my paid weekly column over the summer of 2023 that seemed to only hemorrhage subscribers. I always liked the name, though; it was simple, and it got the point across sans theme or gimmick or pigeon-holing that you were reading a blog about Brianna’s Thoughts, her thoughts on whatever the topic may be. It kept things loose and light and didn’t restrict me to writing about one topic or the other, which was a downside of “That’s Weird” and what I was going for with “BriZigs LLC,” except I turned the latter into something of a Frankenstein’s monster who talked like a bad Reductress writer (I think I should be self-flagellatingly honest here and admit I was rejected from writing for Reductress once).

The Substack stayed that way, new name but untouched, like a museum exhibit preserved under glass, for a good few months before I made the possibly impulsive decision to axe about 95% of the content I had on here. I don’t really regret it, even if some readers may have liked what they read and were sorry to see it go. But a lot of those pieces, especially the ones written under BriZigs LLC, came from a place that never really felt like me. Even if something I write isn’t necessarily “good” or my best writing, I think I still want it to come from a place that I know to be true and authentic. That’s what we talk about in my creative writing class: the importance of writing about what’s true.

I’ve always felt that I could do something with this blog – that it had potential. That’s kind of how I’ve always viewed myself, I think, and this neurotic newsletter which I’ve struggled for years to find an identity for has ironically come to reflect my own struggles to find my identity, confidence, and voice, even if I don’t suffer from a lack of confidence in my ability to write. And every time I bring this newsletter back, I receive startling feedback from a handful of readers that they were anticipating my return. It does feel nice — and gratifying — to know that I was missed when I tend to make myself small convincing myself of my utter irrelevance. But beyond that, my desire to see this newsletter live another day comes from a weird amalgamation of wanting a space to freely write about whatever I want to write about, to somehow manage to produce a level of success and money out of it, but, maybe even more deeply, to get it to a place where regardless of money or status it is a sanctuary for writing things that fulfill me creatively and which together reflect a security in myself as a writer and person.

After getting halfway through my writing class and a couple years into studying the sacred texts of Matt Farley, I feel that becoming one with this newsletter starts by tackling it from a place of authenticity. So, I guess that’s where I’m trying to (re)start it by writing this, and by posting my little creative writing exercise bits and bobs. I am writing something that is true, that is me, and the truth is that I’m figuring things out, that writing has become harder for me, and this newsletter is a part of all of it, and you can choose to be a part of that journey too, on my own terms, I guess. This is my newsletter, after all. And I should probably stop saying “I guess.” (My writing teacher noticed that I write the word “seems” a lot, when I should be firm in my convictions. Yes, as ever).