@EmilyMoranBarwick

Oh hey, hi there, little website of mine. Can't believe it's been a month since I touched your code. The UK trip was a whirlwind. Then got slammed with sickness the moment I got home.

But I'm starting to rally. Just wanted to say hi. Wanted to tickle your HTML a little. Let you know I'm here. And I'm searching for my footing to re-engage.

I'll admit, my previous decade+ experience with the "trauma of being a 'content creator'" (for lack of any better summation...though that, frankly, sounds pathetically whiny and lacks so much of the breadth and depth of the experience...maybe see things like this, this, this etc for some—still incomplete—hints of what I mean...though those also lack the complete story...and I still lack the words...) caught up with me so fast in this new little endeavor of mine. This beautiful little site I made. It found me...and so fast. And I'm working to shake it somehow. To not repeat what happened. To not lose the joy of creating here. To not lose myself. To not have terror hard-wired into any approach to creating.

Thanks for hanging in while I find my way.

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I've gotten my speech more or less ready for next week. I'm speaking in the UK and very much not looking forward to the 20 hours of travel to get there (including an overnight flight during which there is zero chance I will get any sleep).

This time of working on this speech and feeling so far from this little website of mine has been...complicated. Many rather significant and heavy things have happened in my live these last few weeks. And I've felt so far from the engaging relationship I've been building with this space.

I've also found myself starting to develop the same avoidant fear of engaging with this site that I developed with my work over the last decade. The fear of entering the social platform spaces I'd had to inhabit. (It's complicated to try and explain the nature of that fear, and how it's found its way into this space...)

All that (not) said, I wanted to challenge myself by coming back into this Feedbackless Feed...the safest space in my online universe...and at least dip in a tentative toe.

And wouldn't you know it, I re-read my last post below and got to the ASCII butt at the end and absolutely re-delighted myself. And that's what I'm wanting to lean into with this entire site/space/ongoing experiment—to aim to delight/engage/etc myself and hope it happens to delight/engage/etc other people...rather than falling into that trap of aiming to delight/engage other people at the risk of losing all delight and engagement for myself.

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I've been feeling disconnected from my website lately. From my art and writing. Meaning (for me, at least), a reflection of a disconnect from myself.

I'm currently working on writing a speech for my nonprofit work, which is consuming the majority of my creative energy. But it's more than that. More than just my energy being siphoned. There's some deadening of the spark. But I think, perhaps, I too often rely on the spark being present in order for me to create. What if creating itself can lead to the spark sometimes?

Right now, it just feels like even these words are falling flat. I think anymore, my brain and entire being are exhausted from a lifetime of performative masking. But it's also so ingrained that moments of true connection to myself are painfully few and far between.

But also, brain, why does everything have to be such a big fucking deal? This is my little website. Can't I just do some shit on it without all the pathos and anguish of a Greek tragedy? Like, even some fun and stupid shit?

(‿|‿) <-- there. I did it. How whimsical of me!

(it's a butt...)

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I've written before in this Feedbackless Feed about how much I love the idea of holding the pages of a website like a book...what kind of "wear" would a beloved website show with repeat readings? Would it bear creases? Coffee stains? Would favorite pages have dog-eared corners instead of browser bookmarks?

Well, now I have my hands on an actual (phone) book of websites—The Internet Phone Book! I love this project. It brings together the tactile and sensory experience of books (the lifeblood of my youth and adolescence) with the connectivity of the internet. I only wish my lil' website was around in time to be nestled amongst its pages.

It even includes Laurel Schwulst's essay that introduced me to the poetic web and all a website can be—they can even be book! I love that I now have Laurel's essay in a physical book that itself is essentially a printed website of websites.

📸 Check out photos of my Internet Phone Book!📒

I wanted to photograph The Internet Phone Book with my other books and assorted curiosities, amongst which it shall now live.

This lovely project was brought into physical form by artists Kristoffer Tjalve and Elliot Cost (take a tour around both of their websites while you're at it!). I lucked out in snagging a remaining (and signed!) copy from Worth The Paper (who was absolutely lovely to connect with!).

I want to explore more ways of bringing the magic and joy of the poetic, artistic, and small web into the physical world. Just as I want to continue to explore how to connect "more humanly" with other humans—beyond what an RSS feed, like, share, boost, or comment can supply (as lovely as each of those can be). If you have any ideas or active projects for building connection, please reach out and (appropriately enough) connect!

@EmilyMoranBarwick

So I haven't published a "formal post" to this website in a while. I've been writing...almost too much. But it's not been coming out "right." But now, I've got a post ready. It's not the post I wanted to write. But it's the post I have. It's (perhaps) the post I need to make.

But now I stand at the place where I struggle the most: releasing it into the world—or, more so, releasing it onto a social platform (in this case, Mastodon). My brain puts all the weight of the last month of struggling to write, of everything I've been going through, of everything I'm trying to express, of everything I am and want to be—the weight of the entirety of my value as a human being—onto how the fucking post on Mastodon will be received.

It's...problematic, this relationship my brain has with social spaces. It's (part of) why I made this Feedbackless Feed. It's (part of) what I have been trying to write about for a month. It's (part of) what collapsed my sense of self over the last decade plus.

This all sounds absurd without the full story. The full story is what I so desperately want to share. It's what I've been trying to write. But it seems I'm still not in a place where I can put the full story into words. So here I will offer absurd-sounding fractions of the fallout.

The fallout of over a decade of being at the whims of platforms. The fallout of my nonprofit's mission (and my sense of self) being made or broken by confounding algorithmic shifts outside of my control—shifts which traumatically mimic the confounding "unwritten rules" of human interaction that led to a lifetime of painful experiences as an unknowingly Autistic kid/adolescent/adult trying to find connection in this world.

My brain and nervous system react traumatically when sharing into these spaces. And in a desperate effort to not go through that traumatic experience time and again, my brain seeks some formulaic certainty: what time of day to post to Mastodon, how to phrase the post, what tags to use, (etc). But the reality is, there is no formula. Just like there is no formula for how to not hurt when trying to connect with people and not understanding how. But that little Autistic girl yearns for something to hold onto. Some way of knowing how to not be missunderstood—some way to know how to behave, speak, be—such that when she reaches out again, someone reaches back.

Again, I feel this all sounds absurd. All this weight behind posting to Mastodon about a thing I've written on this little website. Perhaps it is absurd. It's also real to me. So here I am this morning, walking alongside that little terrified girl inside me. Trying to find "the right words" and "the right timing" and "the right hashtags" for a stupid Mastodon post in order to try and keep her safe. Knowing that this is not the way to save her. But still (as of yet) not having the certainty and safety she desires. That's what I really want to give to her: safety; connection; recongition. I want to be the one who reaches back to her, and holds her close as long as she needs.

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I happened upon this zine, "On feeling healthy" that is so profoundly spot-on for this moment in my life. I've yet to fully dive in, but this quote from writer and consultant Beth Pickens hits me right where I live:

"Art has saved my life so many times. For every weirdo freak artist I’m friends with...the existence of art has kept them around and sane. This is the theoretical underpinning of my consulting practice—that artists are people who need to be in a creative practice in order to be well. That makes them different from people who don’t need that. Bodies are different. Humans need different things to have a connection to themselves and something beyond themselves, to have their spiritual interior feel well. When artists stop making their work or they get distanced from it or they feel disconnected from it, their quality of life goes down.”

I've been dealing with significant health issues alongside challenges with my art and writing practices. It's hard to tell which is "in the lead." Is it that when I get creatively stuck, my health declines, and thus I'm more creatively stuck? Or does my health decline first, leading to a point of creative stuckness that then exacerbates my health? Does it matter which leads?

It's challenging to explain to doctors the deleterious health effects of disconnection from creative work. And that, more than procedures and medications, I need to find a way to create—even in the state I’m in. That it's my lifeblood.

It's something I even downplay for myself. But finding this zine from The Creative Independent (one of my favorite places on the web) validates the significant connection of creativity and wellbeing. For me, it truly is necessary for survival. For me, art has and will continue to save my life...

@EmilyMoranBarwick

Today marks 24 years since my father died. I remember years ago when it hit the point he'd been dead more years of my life than he'd been alive. (We're far past that now.)

My memories of him now feel more like stories I've told myself than memories I actually formed. Though, what are our conceptions of a person other than the stories we've told ourselves about them?

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I've been trying to decide where to put this delightful sticker my partner gave me. This morning, as I approached my computer (yet again) to try (yet again) to write (yet again) this essay that's lodged (it feels irrevocably) within me, I realized exactly where I needed this sticker to be: directly in my line of sight when I'm writing.

I often joke with my white man friends about "needing to borrow some white man confidence." But fuck if there isn't deep sincerity there.

What if I went through life without torturously questioning my every move? Without making myself smaller and more palatable for everyone? Without erasing the majority of myself entirely so that I can be "presentable" and "appropriate"? Without having my lived experience doubted, questioned, ignored, if not outright denied? What if I didn't have to expend so much energy justifying my own existence? My own humanity?

What if I could write, create, be, exist with the confidence of a mediocre white man?

What if we all could?

...what a world it would be...

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I am writing.

I am writing through brain fog.

I am writing through gut-wrenching pain.

I am writing through the unexplained chaos of my digestive system.

I am writing without being able to eat.

I am creating through it.

And for some reason, I want—I need—"you" to know that I am.

Something in me needs you to know.

Please take this offering...a screenshot from my essay draft. My essay that's currently in fractured sections, typed out between bouts of being doubled over. Returned to, diligently, lovingly, painfully. Something is forming here, but it's taking its time. And I hate that it is. And I want need you to know it's happening. It's just taking time to release. Because I make it so big, the "real posts..." Too big. And my body is in outright rebellion.

An offering...

And I’m writing here too...right now...here in this quiet space. Here I am releasing. Silently, steadily. Here in this Feedbackless Feed. In the Changelog footnotes. I'm writing and releasing.

But those are the quiet places few people see.

So you may not know I’m still creating.

And something in me needs you to know that I am...

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I'm working on an essay that's supposed to be about this Feedbackless Feed. About what it is to me. Why I created it. How it serves me.

And like every time I try to write a "formal post" (a post to be "published officially" rather than released quietly here in the static HTML of the Feedbackless Feed, or nestled deep in the safety of the overwhelming footnotes of my Changelog), it's terrifying.

Whenever I’m trying to write “formally,” it’s terrifying. All the threads and all the whole of everything connected want to be there at once. I feel the need to capture it all at once. And have it all in there. Have all of me in there.

I'm trying to wrangle lightning. Trying to translate what's in my brain into something linear, clear, understandable, digestible. Something completely other than what it actually is. Because I am not linear. I don't think in words. What I want to communicate has no language. Yet it yearns to be heard and is desperate to be understood.

So I wrestle lightning...

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I always anguish when I'm not being pathologically consistent with my presence, engagement, contributions, and "public output" (even when I'm being privately productive). I feel this pressure for some formulaic, unwavering consistency—with my art and writing, within digital communities, on social platforms, in email communications, in...everything.

I used to be consistent to a fault. I forced consistency to points well beyond burnout. To points where I no longer had a choice for consistency.

What if it's okay to be inconsistent? To be humanly variable?

What if that doesn't mean anything about me other than life is inconsistent?

What if it's a sign of my humanity rather than some deep failing?

What if all it means about me is that I am not a machine?

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I added texture to the background of the website...and it makes me feel like I can touch it.

I love the idea of holding the pages of a website like a book...what kind of "wear" would a beloved website show with repeat readings? Would it bear creases? Coffee stains? Would favorite pages have dog-eared corners instead of browser bookmarks?

I love finding ways to make engaging with and navigating this site more of a tactile, sensory experience.

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I'm concerned (shocker) that this website is already becoming TOO MUCH. It's trying to hold too much. (Or that I'm asking it to hold too much...)

I think there is something to be said for curation. For not overwhelming people with too much all at once. How can anyone get a clear sense of things when it's an outright onslaught?

At the same time, I find much of the concern for curation springs from the pressure to fracture ourselves for each frame (professional, personal, artist, writer, friend), each platform, each purpose. A fracturing that, while at times necessary, prudent, utilitarian, can all-to-easily lead us to living with splintered identities, or reducing ourselves to one-dimensional caricatures.

One of the (many) things I'm interested in with this website is seeing how much I can fit within it as a container. (As a BIG ASS BAG, if you will). I'm interested in stretching the bounds of its HTML...seeing how much it can hold.

I see this website as medium, as container, as partner, as poem, as participant, as art, as observer, as receiver, as comforter, as challenger, as limiter, as enabler, as artistic practice, as scroll, as...almost anything but "a website" or "a blog."

Still...the parts of me that anguish over how to "properly present" myself, my work, my art, my writing to the world...those parts want to prune it all down, provide a clear roadmap, clean up the site, sweep into some closet all the mess, make it more professional or more clearly artistic or more clearly for writing or more clearly not "just a website."

Yet, implementing any of those constraints negates all this space is to me. It negates the work I'm practicing here. It collapses the potential bounds of this container before I even begin to fully challenge them...

It also mirrors the self-curation-to-the-point-of-erasure I've experienced over a lifetime of masking—of desperately trying (and usually failing) to "present properly" in a dominantly neurotypical world.

I am not an elevator pitch. I don't have clear, clean boundaries. My art has always been more MacGyver than artisan.

@EmilyMoranBarwick

So...this Feedbackless Feed feed has gotten pretty heavy as of late. So much introspection. So much angst. I mean, look. I'm obviously an angsty person—it drips off every pixel of this site.

But there's also lightness, joy, levity, and snark up in this dumpster fire of a body and lightning storm of a brain. And not to be the most fucking cliché I can possibly be (and quote Pink in the process): but I am my own worst enemy in staying connected to those parts.

So fuck it, heavy darkness. I will float through the brain fog like a luxury sauna, and revel in the beautiful horrible absurdity of this existence.

And maybe make a fart joke or two...just to not take myself too seriously...

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I'm grateful that I happened upon an article by Rob Hardy that was exactly what I needed to hear today. As evidenced by the many metric-angst-filled Feedbackless Feed thoughts below this one, I've been struggling with how I (and we as a whole) measure the value/impact/import of creative work. And, more troublingly, how our reliance on social media reach, clicks, and "engagement" generally necessitates an algorithm-chasing that warps the very creation we're trying to reach people with.

I'm always looking for different metrics by which to guide my work. Such that I stay tethered to myself and not carried away by what I think I should do, what people might want, what "the platforms" might smile upon—before again shifting their algorithmic whims.

In his article "Measuring what matters," Rob Hardy offers his own set of metrics:

" Internal Resonance: How did it feel to write and publish this? Did it make me feel alive, both intellectually and somatically? Did it feel like something no one else but me could have created? Did it feel true to who I am, and who I'm becoming? Did the content of this writing matter to the deepest parts of me, beneath all of the cultural stories about who I think I should be and what I should do?

External Resonance: How did people respond? Did I strike an emotional nerve? This goes beyond easy, legible metrics like pageviews or social media likes, or even comments, which are at best hazy approximations of external resonance. It's about looking for signals that something genuinely MATTERED to one or more humans, and elicited a response that's out of proportion with the average digital interaction. Lots of likes is an okay-ish signal. Lots of comments is a clearer signal. A small handful of comments or private replies from people saying they've never felt so seen or understood by a piece of writing—that's the kind of thing I'm trying to discern and quantify here.

There's this tension for creators of all kinds...of course, you want your work to reach people. Yet to "grow" your reach, you must let the metrics and algorithms guide you...and if you play it right, if you alter your style, mimic trends, chase metrics, you will reach more people. But with what? At the same time, creating in a void can feel...unfulfilling.

Hardy continues:

" For the game I'm playing with Ungated, and with my life, understanding these two metrics matters more than anything I'd find in a traditional analytics dashboard. What I'm optimizing for isn't growth, certainty, or control. It's not the maximization of short-term revenue, reach, or influence. Instead, I'm chasing connection—both with myself and with others. I'm trying to design an infinite game, where I spend my days working on things that bring me alive, hence the internal resonance score, and connecting with a relatively small handful of true fans, hence the external resonance score.

I want to work on my own set of metrics for measuring what matters. Lest I lose myself entirely in chasing who and what I think I should be...

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I have this work of fiction I wrote back in 2011. It's an essay borne from my compulsive drive to self-catalogue...a drive itself borne from questions I scrawled in my journal at age 7:

"I'm having a lot of internal problems lately. I can't sort out my feelings or even who I am. I just want to be me. But, I don't know who "me" is. Who would I be if I wasn't under the influence of someone else? What if I had grown up alone? Would I have been a totally different person?

I know, though, that that would be me. The real, wild, untamed and unchanged me. All I need to do is find me, and maybe then I'll be happy."

— journal entry from 7-year-old Emily

I've been wrestling with whether to post this to my website. It's fiction, for one, which I've yet to include here. It's also a piece I wrote fourteen years ago.

At the same time, it pulls on so many of the tangled threads I've been exploring lately...questions of identity; of the devolving influence of social platforms; of when I'm "allowed" to call myself an artist, writer; of how my framing and conception of myself shifts so radically depending on which community I'm currently inhabiting; on the constant conflict I feel about what this website itself should be, what should be on it, in what form, and what that says about who I am: serious writer? artist? blogger? hobbyist?

And I've been doing all of this through an oppressive brain fog due to ongoing curveballs my body is lobbing at me at the most inopportune times, making these kinds of considerations feel like thinking through cement.

But I think I'm going to publish it. Release it into this space, even in all the uncertainty. An act that, while in "reality," is profoundly inconsequential: the posting of an old essay to a tiny website...but for me, in this moment, in this time, and in this state...means something.

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I'm feeling the pull/pressure/obligatory demand again that the only way for my work to ever reach anyone...the only way for me to ever publish a "real book," have "real art shows," make a "real impact" (and thus be a "real person") is to re-engage with social media. To build up a new following for my personal work.

I've built a "following" before. Before I knew anything of the platforms. I think that's part of why it worked. Until it didn't. Until I knew too much. Until the foundation below me shifted. Below all of us.

It's not really the algorithmic shifts or the devolution of the platforms that devastates. It's the shifts (loss) of my own sense of identity and self...the devolution of my whole humanness. The glossed-over-angst-riddled-shell-off-a-human I became. The shift from creating art and writing to "producing content." The shift from human to "brand."

Even knowing the cost. Even knowing what becomes of me, I'm feeling the inevitability of re-entering those spaces. Of "building a following." Because, anymore, that’s "the only way" to be seen as a viable author. A viable artist. Someone whose work can be marketed. Someone who can actually reach people. Someone who is actually a "real person of note." Even though the higher my numbers climbed, the less of a real person I was.

But it does feel obligatory...so perhaps I send myself again into those spaces...as an offering...a sacrifice of self...for...something...

What a backwards and ill-fated attempt to gain a sense of self, to gain identity and validity of myself as a "real person"...because I know that I only lose all of that in those spaces...

@EmilyMoranBarwick

Somewhere in me, I remember a time I created because I could not not create.

There was no audience, no reception, no crafting for anyone. I created because I couldn't help but create.

The drive coursed through me. It was like electricity—energizing with an almost threatening intensity...like if I didn't discharge it, it would overload my circuits.

It was like holding onto a live wire. It felt dangerous.

How I yearn for that danger now. I'd grab that live wire in a heartbeat.

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I've noticed this pattern... I finally felt a true spark of connection again to engaging with my website as an artistic practice. It was invigorating. Playful. Curious. Boundless in possibilities in an energizing rather than overwhelming way.

I find I crave dialogue and community with other artists, poets and writers working in this intersection of art, writing, poetry, and websites. I returned, as I often do, to Laurel Schwulst, whose work directly centers in this space I'm so drawn to. (I highly recommend her essay "My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be?")

From there, I allowed myself to "surf" the web through artists' sites...organically carried upon the collective breath of these creators from one to another. And it was beautiful. Carrying my brain further into what the web and what a website can be. Furthering my drive to stay in dialogue with mine as an artwork, an art practice itself.

BUT THEN...the shift...the pattern...

It crept in little by little...I shifted from taking in the creative explorations of other artists/poets/writers to looking at their accomplishments, awards, art shows, publications, press coverage. Looking at their social media followings, newsletter methods and subscriber counts. I started feeling that ever-common-refrain within me of "how do I get my work 'out there' such that I’m a 'real' artist/writer/person".

From the delight of playing with pixels and experimenting with my website, I fall into the pressure of production—of how this playful art practice isn't "public facing" in a way that "shows my work." And even when it is public-facing, how do I show it? How do I "get it to people?" I'm so tied to the concept of nothing other than full essay posts, or a complete art show "counting." And even then, only counting if there is some external recognition...some verification that "yes, you can be an artist/writer/person."

These dynamics of how to "get the thing I made out to people" has been and remains the biggest stumbling block for my creative process and my mind. It's been there since childhood, far before internet times. As a little (unknowingly) neurodiverse girl who wanted so very badly to connect with others...to write and create and have it touch people's lives the way others' writing and creation had touched hers...had kept her alive, even.

That "how" becomes a grinding, angst-driven pit into which the creative impulse and connection is utterly macerated...

Even now, as I write this...it feels good to do so...but simultaneously, there is the rising chorus of "does this matter if it's just a post here in this Feedbackless Feed that notifies no one?" "should this be a post-post" "should I be doing a newsletter more about even these things?" "should this have its own RSS?" "should I make posts on Mastodon about this?" "should I try using Instagram or Facebook?" "should I (and how can I??) try reaching out to and connecting with artists actively working in this intersection?" And on and on...

And suddenly, the joyful, invigorating surfing has landed me back in the macerating pit...and I feel the pressure of "content production." Of returning to a traditional, recognizable "proof of output": a long-form essay. Better churn one out and then you can play more with art and writing that no one may see for a bit...and that even when it's here, you don't know how or if to even "notify" people of being here...like this post itself...released silently into this space...with no newsletter, no notification, no fanfare...just breathed into the web...)

...does it still matter?

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I spent a few hours yesterday making an Instagram post (🤮) about my website. I did this as an exercise in my ongoing exploration of un-fucking my brain from my decade+ experience (read: trauma) of (reluctant) full-time social-media engagement. (This was for my educational nonprofit...long, long story there.)

Generally, approaching those platforms—even thinking of them—evokes a visceral response within me. This time, I was somehow able to slide into a different mindspace. I thought of this stupid little post to my barely-there and highly-(purposefully)-neglected personal Instagram not as "marketing for my website" but as an artistic experiment. As a work itself...or part of one.

As a whole, I find posting to any social feeds profoundly agitating, unfulfilling, and, to a great degree, debilitating to the creative process, as well as myself... But if I approach a post as an exploration of the issues inherent within these platforms, then it's something I can engage with non-destructively. (At least for a time...can't linger there too long)...

Making that post tapped into some of the joyous snark and platform-referential levity I felt when making the bones of this very website (I mean, at least I find parts of the post quite funny...). I sensed a connection to something I've felt severed over the last few weeks. I don’t know where (if anywhere) this is going...this tentative tiptoeing into spaces I find abhorent and debilitating... But there's something here for me...finding a way to enter these spaces and release into them pieces of what may become a greater whole. Some larger project. Or, if nothing else, some small part of making me more whole...of taking back from them what they took bit-by-bit from me.

This may all sound ridiculous. And in many ways it is. But as I said in that stupid Instagram post:

"this whole thing may sound super whiny. It cuts much deeper than what I can elucidate here. It impacts how we all create/interact with/encounter art, writing, each other. It turns us into "content producers" and "content consumers."

Art is more than that… We're all more than that.

@EmilyMoranBarwick

Sometimes I feel like a broken record when almost everything I write includes something about my neurodivergence (I'm AuDHD, or, as I like to say, "Autistic with an ADHD booster pack"). But what is our life experience if not how we perceive and experience the world? I cannot extricate myself from my neurodivergence any more than I can remove my brain from the equation of how I experience anything—it's the lens through which I exist.

Upon sharing publicly that I am Autistic, many well-meaning people said things along the lines of "don't let a label define you!" But Autistic/ADHD/AuDHD are not "labels." They are inherent to who I am.

Progressively re-processing my past through the lens of my growing understanding of my own neurodivergence has provided me with a sense of validation, compassion, and tenderness for myself—where before was self-gaslighting, self-criticism, and self-abuse. This is something I hear from so many late-in-life-diagnosed individuals.

So, as much as I worry my writing will become irritatingly repetitive, sounding like "everything is always about neurodivergence," I equally feel that the significance of neurodivergence deserves to be voiced. For me, it's been life-saving. And I've heard similar experiences from others. So, at the risk of annoying or irritating, I'll err on the side of talking about it too much. Because so many of us NEED to hear it. We need our realities spoken. We need our experiences validated. We need our full selves to be seen. Especially at a time when (at least in my country) our entire right to exist is under attack.

@EmilyMoranBarwick

Really appreciate Dan Sinker's post "The Who Cares Era." It's a call for humanity...for more of the beautifully rough, messy, and ever-so-human imperfection that breaths life into all of us who encounter it.

We need now more than ever to bring back giving a fuck. And giving it openly, messily, and humanly.

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I'm hitting this frustrating place time and again with my writing...some combination of (most likely self-imposed) Observer Effect and ongoing uncertainty and disquiet with the purpose of my writing.

Obviously, I'm publishing my writing publicly. So there's inherently an awareness of observation—of it being (at least in part) "for the public." Otherwise, why not keep it in a journal?

Currently, I'm working on a topic that could go in so many directions. And I'm battling with how much to lean into the autobiographical versus a more universal commentary. Both interest me. Both may interest others.

I always want to somehow fit everything all at once in every piece. I want it to be for the world, for myself, for all of us. I want to cathartically create and exorcize what's within me, and somehow have that catharsis unburden others in some way.

I also become self-conscious of how self-involved so much of this can feel/seem/sound/be(?). Like I'm making the most masturbatory website of all time and trying to pass it off as a noble artistic pursuit.

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I'm feeling quite conflicted about posting my open letter to my body. It feels too rough and unformed. And definitely too much of a downer. I do have rallying within me...I will keep going...I always have...but I just don't think we should always have to include the upswing...because it overshadows/whitewashes the darkness that also deserves recognition. Especially because, when you're in the shit of it, and all you hear from others is the upswing, you can be left feeling even more alone...that you need to just "suck it up and see the positive." And I find that toxic.

But perhaps a post like that is better suited for the pages of my journal than the pixels of this website. Now that I have this site, where I am openly and purposefully sharing things that most people would relegate to a journal, it makes the decisions of what to share here versus keep to myself quite challenging. (I'm so shit at decisions, after all...)

There's also the internal debate of whether I post just to post something, or sit with something long enough and work on it enough until it feels like it's something "worth" posting. But what the fuck does that even mean?

Part of me feels this "working in public" has value. Part of me feels it can't help but become performative. Too self-consciously aware of observation, such that it's no longer true to itself. Even now in writing this stupid little post here on my silent Feedbackless Feed, I feel the internal judgement of this being manufactured, self-indulgent, navel-gazing drivel.

(though in reality, my neck is far too fucked up for me to gaze at my navel...)

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I just published a new post and I'm now facing the part of creating I struggle with the most: how to share it.

The greatest hindrance I face in creating and writing has always been "how do I get the thing I make out to people?" Even in the days before the internet, as a little overly-intense kid with dreams of writing books and making art, I agonized over "but how do you get things published or out to people?"

My brain is spiraling about how and when to share this post to Mastodon. What time of day? With what verbiage? With what tags? And on and on...

I delve into this deeper in this most massive footnote of all time on my Change(log)...I promise it's deeper than some desire for "likes and shares"...

It's really all rooted in the fear of a little neurodivergent girl wanting so badly to connect with others. Reaching out desperately through the noise, and hoping someone, somewhere, reaches back...

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I'm encouraged by and grateful for "Your labor isn’t a sign of defeat" from Mandy Brown of A Working Library. I've been struggling with how nothing I’m trying to write is "flowing"...it's all laborious and feels forced. In this reading note, Mandy quotes from Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences About Writing. In part:

"...why not give up on the idea of “flow” and accept the basic truth about writing?

It’s hard work, and it’s been hard work for everyone all along. There’s good reason to believe this, apart from the fact that it’s true. If you think that writing—the act of composition—should flow, and it doesn’t, what are you likely to feel? Obstructed, defeated, inadequate, blocked, perhaps even stupid. The idea of writer’s block, in its ordinary sense, Exists largely because of the notion that writing should flow.

But if you accept that writing is hard work, And that’s what it feels like when you’re writing, Then everything is as it should be. Your labor isn’t a sign of defeat. It’s a sign of engagement. The difference is all in your mind, but what a difference."

It's the bit I've bolded in the last paragraph that really hits me...that everything is as it should be. Because I spend so much time, energy, and anguish in my life thinking I'm not doing things right...thinking something is wrong/off/disconnected. But what if it's as it should be?

Of course, part of me resists this thought being used to justify suffering, toil, and misery as "necessary/obligatory" for creation...that if I’m not miserable, something is wrong. Yet another trap I've fallen into. I think there's something somewhere in the grey areas of it all. And I hope to find it.

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I've started and stopped no less than five new essay topics over the last week or so. I'm circling something...but it's still out of reach...

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I'm considering making a subdomain of photos.fromemily.com (or similar) to house informal image-based posts. Especially as I recently acquired some magnificent vintage books at a yard sale and estate sale. And they absolutely need to be shared with the world in some capacity...

(Think: sex manuals from the 20's-40's with hilarious and problematic advice; an Encyclopaedia of Practical Information from 1889 with such absurdly rangy entries on a single page as "Remedy for Bad Breath," "To Cleanse Goose Feathers," and "To Destroy Vermin in Children's Heads." Yes...To Destroy Vermin in Children's Heads.)

I started working on inserting pics of those into this very post, but the CSS-wrangling will take me down quite the rabbit hole and I really do want to try and get some writing done.

Although, I think it's something to consider...why I hold writing above CSS tinkering and subdomain-creation. And not just writing, but a certain caliber/type of writing. Which is why I haven't just posted something more casual to this site. Despite saying I want this space to not become overly precious....

(I'm also preemptively overwhelmed with the subdomain/entire other site creation...or, more so, overwhelmed by how lost within it I can get...tinkering for eternity...)

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I'm getting nowhere with the piece I’m trying to write. I'm forcing it. As much as I want to be gentle and give space and reconnect to the creative impulse...I'm forcing it. And I can keep forcing. I've done it so many times for so very long. But it's taken a severe toll over my lifetime. And it gets harder each time. And the cost gets steeper.

And it breaks my heart that my default relationship with myself is abusive and intolerant. That even knowing this, I will keep pushing. Thinking somehow that's the path towards something other than self-obliteration. Despite a lifetime of leaving the casualties of the most vulnerable parts of myself in my wake.

@EmilyMoranBarwick

Coming back to try and write. As soon as I approach the computer, my whole being seems to shut down. There's a resistance there on a visceral level. Something deep and unattended to. Something raging against the way I'm approaching this. Something forced for too long to produce and perform in frames and spaces and ways it doesn't fit. Something no longer willing to take it without some fight...even if it's a deadening of everything...

...I want to listen to it.

@EmilyMoranBarwick

I'm feeling uninspired and disconnected from my writing. Or, more so, I'm feeling uninspired and disconnected from linear, clear, narrative writing. Presentational writing. Performative, in a sense, in that it's not my brain's "native language."

My brain's burnt out on translating the way it works into frameworks, words, and structures others can follow. And here I am trying to force it. Because letting it fully range "in public" still feels...unsafe. It still feels like I need to present even my "mess" in a recognizable, discernible, well-established package.

And that feels like the forced labor of masking...not creative impulse.