Last week, I discovered my WordPress subscriptions page, something I haven’t looked at in years. Apparently there was a time when I actively found new blogs on this platform and subscribed to them. According to my subs history, 2009, 2011, and 2015 were spates of adding a lot of new follows. But because the reader and writer environments here aren’t linked up very well (so much so that I forgot about my subscription page for years), I didn’t follow anyone all that rigorously even though I had gone to the effort of adding them to my feed. There were a few I read avidly, but I had those ones bookmarked for easy access.

When I clicked through the links to each of my subscriptions, I discovered that 95% of them were no longer functioning. Either the posts stopped somewhere around 2012, or the links took me to broken pages of php code. Of those frozen in time, it was apparent that many of these small-time blogs had tried to monetize using Google Ads shortly before they were abandoned completely. We all remember the era of famous bloggers such as Dooce (Heather Hamilton – recently deceased) who rose to fame in the early 2000s and at one point was reportedly making $40,000 per month on banner ads off her site alone, I’m sure. This kind of success reported in the blogosphere encouraged many (with few to no followers) to believe that somehow their blogs might become a source of passive income. Google Ads capitalized on this fact by partnering with WordPress to make it easy to do. Looking at some of those defunct properties now, it all seems a bit naiive, though there *were* some people who made big money through these channels, and we can all hope right?

My favourite blog-niche was “personal” blogs by non-moms (mom-blogging was similar, but focused on the antics of children and difficulties of parenting which I didn’t relate to). I can’t remember the specific names of any of them now, but there were several I read and commented on with regularity. I was not interested in aspirational content so much as I wanted to hear real stories and reflections from women close to the same age as me. I might be a little jealous of their particular life circumstance, or intrigued by choices they had made – but these were mostly women I might be friends with if we happened to live in the same geographical zone.

It was all very pre-social media, which explains why a lot of this type of blogging dropped off entirely by the 2010s with the rise of Facebook and then Instagram. These days, the blogosphere is dominated by sponsored content (sponcon) which seems mostly to be generated by Chat GPT. There are a handful of WordPress blogs I read on the regular, but these days I get my content and connection elsewhere on the Internet. Ditto social media like FB and Instagram – I drop in for brief periods, but I don’t spend much time there engaging (liking or commenting) with folks other than my friends, and I try to steer clear of anything that smacks of “influencer” content aside from a few people who make me laugh. I am a sucker for reels, unfortunately, which is why I can never go near TikTok as I find the whole format time-wasting to no real purpose.

More and more I find myself drawn to communities within Substack publications. Substack really is the natural evolution of something like WordPress, but better. As a creator, it’s way simpler to use, free, and allows direct monetization through subscription fees set by the creator. Substack makes it’s money through taking a 10% cut of all subscription fees. Though it does not penalize those of us who publish for free, the platform promotes monetized newsletters at a much higher rate than non-monetized ones (which makes sense from a business perspective). As it has grown from being the newsletter platform it started out as, SS has added a lot more features that support community engagement such as pod and video casting, community forums, notes, and recommendations (which looks a lot like the old blogrolls of the past). It’s really become the all-in-one blogging platform over the last couple of years – one that I log into daily for reading and writing projects.

This leaves me wondering what to do about this blog which serves an entirely different purpose than my Substack, Comfort for the Apocalypse which has a focused publishing schedule and categories of interest (recipes, textiles, the ongoing collapse of civilization!) Red-cedar has always published in the meandering and personal vein, something I do not want to give up – but I wonder if I’d be better served as an author to have content that is more discoverable, on an easier-to-use (and free) platform. I’ve often wanted to do an audio-segment to companion this blog, which SS facilitates seamlessly. I can port my twenty (!) years of content over, as well as my domain. What I would lose are the comments and likes, as well as the ability to really customize my blog interface (but from a usability perspective the minimalist interface of SS works way better for users, so I’m happy to abandon the templating system of WP which isn’t very good for people at the lowest level of the payment structure).

As I write all this out I realize that I’m going to at least experiment with porting my content over to see how it translates – I’ve talked myself into it as I’ve written this post (I rarely know what I think until I write it out – here is evidence). This might lead to some other aspects of this long-term project shifting, or it might not. But I’ll not be giving up on Red Cedar either way, as it has always been a blog in the truest sense – a log of my days and years, a journal, a place to share what I think whether it’s polished or not.

It’s probably no surprise that our bathroom isn’t done yet despite my confidence of last week; the plumber showed up 5 days after our scheduled day, but at least we have hot water again, plus the shower and sink plumbing has been upgraded a prepped for the installation of the shower and fixtures. We are now ready to install the shower stall and door, before moving onto drywall repair and baseboards.

A couple other items I have moved on this week include getting the household go-bags stocked and organized (up until now, I have only had one kindof pathetic bag for the two of us), and finding a roofer who will come replace our roof later this fall. Writing about my household procrastination problem last week seems to have helped me confront my to-do list and make some headway on it. Hooray!

Earlier this week I came across the concept of extroverted processing over on Austin Kleon’s Substack (paid post, sorry). He includes it in a list of old notes to himself and says “I never really felt like I really had that much going on in my head — I need to make things with my hands and talk about things with my tongue in order to process them properly. Most recently I’ve discovered that art isn’t just a way of uncovering what I think, it’s probably more valuable to me as a way of discovering how I feel.” This really jumped out at me because that is 100% what most of my talking and writing is about – discovering what I actually think and feel about things. I just don’t come to a lot of conclusions inside my head without some kind of output to get there.

I first understood this tendency way back in a college Canadian literature class when I was twenty-one and I started speaking about a text we were reading. I remember feeling a bit amazed with the interesting connections I was making in the discussion, that I hadn’t previously thought of. Back then, there was no Internet, and so it took me years before I came across the term “verbal processor” which is essentially a person who speaks in order to clarify thoughts. As I have spent more and more time writing over the years, I have come to understand it in the same way, that writing is a way for me to uncover what I actually think. I do not think things and then write them down, the writing itself helps me think about my ideas. And for whatever reason, sharing that externally is an important part of the process – hence I’ve had a blog for 20 years, and a newsletter is part of my current output. This is what moves me, from simply being a “verbal” processor to an “extroverted” one. I don’t simply need to talk it through, but no matter the medium I work with, externalizing it is key.

I think this orientation is often misunderstood as classic extroversion more generally, something I’ve often been confused about in my life. For while I tend process externally, I don’t necessarily get more energy from being with people, then being alone (which is what separates the ‘verts from one another). When I was younger, I think my extroversion, which manifested in my teens as a desperate need for connection with others, was a way to heal from a somewhat alienating childhood. But as I’ve aged into a life I truly choose, I have discovered I am much more an ambivert, with a tendency towards introversion (I recently took an online personality test over at 16personalities which strongly suggests I am in the camp of introverts).

Crazy, I know! This does not square with what people think of me since I throw a lot of parties and dinners, and host musicians and all that. But the truth is, I’m happy alone working in my studio or the house, most of the time. It’s where I feel most at peace, and most productive. I have increasingly recognized (after reading Enchanted by Katherine May who discovered this tendency in herself to be linked to autism) that to be comfortable in my social world, I rely on alcohol to help me get in the groove with others – which means that I’m almost always drinking when I spend time in the outside world. At home, alone or with Brian, I almost never drink because I don’t feel the need to loosen up in order to allow others in (which is a whole other set of issues I’m working on in therapy). I do not love this about myself, but I’m starting to understand where it come from, and it suggests something about where I am most at ease. On the other hand, without social engagement, I would have nowhere to process – which is pretty essential to my intellectual and creative capacity. It’s no wonder that I spend a lot of time orchestrating social engagements that bring interesting/smart/creative people into my life – my own output depends on it!

The other day, Brian and I returned home from a social engagement with some old activist friends and I found myself making a list of all the people I could talk to about my book project. People who would get where I was coming from, and be able to argue with me where I might be off in my thinking. I’ve never consciously made a list like that as an approach to my writing before, but it seems to me very important that I create a circle in my life with whom I can have an ongoing conversation as one way of staying on track with my book. My friend Jill is my creative coach, so I’ve got her in my corner already, but I think I might branch out this time and find more focused conversations to fuel my work, particularly as I start to really unpack my ideas in writing.

Self-discovery for the win? I will let you know how it goes.

On Saturday night I returned from a 7-day Zen Sesshin in the mountains outside of Squamish. This was my 7th sesshin since I started practicing with my Zen community 10 years ago, but my first in-person retreat in over 3 years due to covid.

Sesshin is an intensive residential meditation retreat with a focus on monastic Buddhist practice. It includes many rituals to encourage full immersion in meditation, even during meals. Participants rise at 5 am and go to bed at 9 pm, and there is little “free” time during the day. At a regular sesshin, at least 8 hours per day are spent in the zendo (meditation hall), with the remainder spent at meals, in work practice, or taking short breaks for rest practice.

A sesshin removes one from regular daily life to allow for full engagement with meditation. It is sometimes liberating, occasionally illuminating, and always exhausting. Though it is not really the blissful/restful experience most people associate with the idea of a meditation retreat, it is always a heart and mind-expanding exercise for me, one I’ve really missed over the last few years.

I had big plans for my drop back into regular life (writing, working out, seeing friends) as soon as I got home, but on Sunday night I came down with a cold (likely picked up on the packed ferry). Though it’s a relatively mild illness, it’s put the brakes my return somewhat and allowed me to preserve a lengthened period of quiet. I went into a pretty altered state towards the end of sesshin, and I’m not sure that I’m fully reintegrated even now, so I think that having my roll slowed a bit is a good thing.

Although the forms are always the same (we sit, we walk, we chant, we eat – all together all the time), each sesshin has a totally different character depending where you are at when you arrive. While preparing to go, I thought I would spend a lot of my time on the cushion unpacking the last few hellish months and it would be a heavy retreat, but instead I was treated to the running hamster wheel that is every inconsequential thought I’ve ever had and found the letting go of them one after another to be the simple whack-a-mole of observing one’s thoughts. On the other hand, my sleep got very strange and started to blend seamlessly in with meditation practice (I would wake in the night frequently, already in a state of meditation or thinking I was). Although I slept very little, I was never actually mentally tired, though physically I would hit the wall every once and awhile and need to lie down. I’ve always slept quite deeply on retreat, but I do understand that this kind of wakeful non-sleeping is common enough and was in no way unpleasant.

It’s so hard to describe what sesshin is like, and as I say it’s different every time. But “feeling all the feelings” is an apt way to describe a week of silent observation. One thing that always trips me out is looking around at all the other people and knowing they are having their own roller coaster of experience right alongside me no matter how they appear to be getting along. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have a whole lot of big feeling-self during a retreat like this, it just goes with the territory.

This was not a retreat of big catharsis for me, nor was it full of internal promises to “do better” or “be better” – but I did come away with more thoughts on a question about my spiritual path that has been open for awhile. I’m going to rest more with that question and the answers that are forming, but this retreat was a confirmation of how much this practice continues to resonate whether I’m on an intensive retreat, or sitting for my daily practice in the tiny Zendo at Birdsong.