Substack Notes: A Journey thru Digital Emptiness
My journey with Notes was surprisingly emotive and revealing. Here's how it went down....
I received an email from Substack yesterday announcing its new feature: Notes.
I’m famous for ignoring emails, so I did just that with this one.
But today, despite myself, I opened it.
Notes offers the ability to share ideas, inspirations, appreciation in an easy, quick short-form way.
It sort-of looks like a Twitter feed.
I regarded this new feature with scepticism and suspicion.
My thought that followed was: ‘Do we really require another short-form superficial way of communication?’
As someone who is practiced in digging up roots of emotion and belief, behind thoughts and feelings, I felt beneath that thought.
There I found some heaviness.
A sinking feeling.
So I went exploring.
The Exploration
The heaviness I felt was akin to excess baggage that weighs you down, causing you to sink with growing dread. When I breathed into this, I found a lot of chaotic thoughts, emotions and memories.
This is interesting when it comes to our experiences with digital interfaces. Often, we may think we are reacting to the content - what we are reading, hearing or watching. That may be true. But, there is also the experience of how we are processing the content we are ingesting. This can be subtle and hard to discern.
I realized that my reaction to Notes, wasn’t at all about Notes. It was something much quieter that was lurking somewhere in my consciousness.
One of the memories that came up was around the time Twitter started getting really popular. It was probably late 2008.
I was at work and since I worked in tech, a bunch of my coworkers were early to the platform. My coworkers were talking about Twitter in the lunch room. They spoke excitedly about how they were following then-famous people, and how said famous people had liked one of their tweets. There was intrigue and genuine excitement.
I had heard the name Twitter, until that lunch, I didn’t know anything about it at the time. I remember leaving my lunch half-eaten and running off to make a profile.
In that moment, all the needs of social acceptance and belonging within me that ruled my life in high-school came flooding back.
I wanted to be part of something with cool people.
I desperately wanted that sense of belonging one feels when they are invited to a party with said cool people.
I wanted to be in the know and included.
I needed to be seen tweeting.
I just had to have the next cool and interesting thing to talk about.
And I absolutely wanted to post that next tweet that would go viral.
There were several other memories and experiences like that, from my childhood and adult life that came bubbling up to my consciousness.
Long forgotten and never looked at, they had collected dust on the floor of my unconscious mind, quietly eating away at my sense of belonging and social fulfilment.
In hind-sight, these memories and how desperately isolated I secretly felt, coloured so many of my online interactions - from online dating to forming opinions after reading a blog and even in maintaining a professional network of past colleagues.
We don’t often realize how much our emotional needs dictate our relationship to tech. But it does.
Very much so.
Though that initial emotional need to belong was strong, I rarely used my Twitter account.
I hosted a lot of work-events at one time, and for that it fulfilled a purpose - to leverage networks. But on an ongoing basis, it didn’t add sustained value to my day and my work, like it may have for other people.
My tweets never went viral. And though I tried, I could never keep up and ride the wave of relevance.
Very simply, it never made me feel good.
And so, I abandoned it. Never really thinking about this experience until today.
Other people, especially my coworkers, still used it. It did add value, context and support to their day - or so I imagined.
There were many times, when someone would send me a link to a tweet and ask me to read it and the comments, instead of just having a regular conversation with me about the subject.
Experiences like that left me feeling empty of real connection, empty of true inspiration and without joy of meandering, thought provoking conversation.
So, I felt a little salty about Twitter and those who used it, because it wasn’t ‘a party I was at’ anymore.
I never voiced it, or really even thought about it, because it felt overly emotional and unnecessary at the time.
This was the heaviness I had tapped into, when I opened Substack’s email about Notes.
I had never re-visited any of these thoughts, emotions or experiences. I never had a reason or feeling to guide me there until that moment. But, there it all was.
This was the relationship at that time, between my social and human emptiness and something new and cool the tech world just released.
The thing that I, and so many of us, tend to glaze over.
But now with so much of what AI is and how we live our Humanity rising to be explored, this could no longer be something I glazed over.
So I used a combination of my training and my practices to dive deep into my emotional waves and belief constructs, until I was able to unhook from them and return to neutral.
I think, this is where the Human lives.
The Exploration
Once my past experience and emptiness came to light, I understood why I thought and felt what I did when I initially saw the email explaining Substack’s Notes.
It’s really amazing, when you pause to think about something that you otherwise react to from auto-pilot. From a place of new-found neutrality, I actually got to explore Notes with a fresh sense of wonder, rather than scepticism.
I pocked around on Notes, saw how other people used it, and wondered if this is a feature I could or should use. It helped me reflect upon my Substack experience in general.
As an author on Substack, the writers platform is of great value to me.
Frankly, I love writing here!
It has made the link between my thoughts, my creative process and my written communication so much better. I experience enjoyment in the process of writing, something I really struggled with before. Writing articles and sharing them feels freer, which is such an incredible feeling!
Other writers and contributors on here continue to inspire me in supportive and brilliant ways. A little joy of mine is to scan through comments on articles - both mine and that of others.
Comments sometimes flow into great conversations, beyond the original article. They are essential and diverse. This diversity of experience, thought, ideas and expression is held in easy confluence.
That’s when the Notes feature clicked for me!
From what I understand, Notes is designed to capture that confluence, as it evolves for each of us in our shared and changing world.
I love that we are all getting to participate in breathing value back into the written word and creative expression.
I didn’t realize how much I appreciated, and even needed all of this. I had gotten used to not having it - online at least.
Like many others, I got complacent with being an unconscious consumer of content, curated by unknown hands.
When I did realize it, the Notes feature made so much sense!
Isn’t that quite extraordinary?!?
To pause and ask ourselves why we use a particular hardware, a software, an app, a wearable, a platform or even a feature as part of the general tech that we use.
To uncover something about our relationship with the digital world, as it is now, and as it is evolving.
To free ourselves from what has felt less that intentional, joyful, meaningful and real for us and get to choose different.
To realize that something as simple as being able to post an article - censor-free on a platform of others who appreciate the same thing - can be a beautiful and joyful thing.
To know that there are Creators of tech and digital experiences that understand the value of creative expression and are working to elevate and empower.
Appreciation, Reflection & Onward
How we write, how we share, what we create and what we consume digitally is changing. This can be in response to what Bit Tech decides. Or, I think, it can come from our deepest, conscious activation as Humans who live, breathe, connect and create.
This inner direction and activated choice may very well be what dictates how AI and tech affects or impacts us in our lives. I’ve explored this more in a previous piece: AI & Human-ness.
It is up to us to know, or come to know, what we value and require and then seek it.
If it doesn’t exist, then that may be what drives creation.
If it does exist, then we jubilate in finding it and it finding us.
This is us, reclaiming value, purpose, culture and maybe even economy back into Creating. We all get to be a part of it.
I choose to believe that as with all things, our tech can be a supportive, beautiful and connective aspect of our life. Not because it is someone else’s responsibility to make it, but because we collaboratively make it so.
Through this little realization and exploration, my belief vibrates as complete and true today.
For that and more, I thank Substack and all the contributors and readers on this awesome platform!
If Notes feels like it could be awesome for you, check it out!
As a subscriber to Connect the Dots, you’ll automatically see my notes.
You can also share your musings, your view or vision of the world we are Creating now.
Feel free to like, reply, or share them around - it could be fun!
You can always refer to the Notes FAQ for assistance.
Commendable effort 👍
This article made me think about my 47 year Work life experiences and incredible technical developments since I entered Work in 1970, in India & overseas in mid-80s till my retirement🤗.
My Company had just bought an IBM Mainframe (where input data had to be punched by several staff & then fed) & for several years, it was a showpiece for visitors & large customers, to exhibit our technical superiority. Moved to Electronic typewriters, which had a memory - WOW (this WOW for the late 70s), on to DOS system operated Desk top in the 80s. With the advent of Cell phones & Laptops in the 90s bigger WOWs were in store.
I always had the tendency to accept any tech advancement with sceptism; which I finally managed to overcome this by following more or less what you have elaborated 👍👍