substack pieces that changed me
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In my last post, is substack becoming tiktok for writers?, I talk about the importance of supporting the writers we love here. As the platform keeps changing and the future of online writing is remains uncertain, it’s more important than ever to support the writers we like—especially knowing how much work goes into a single long-form piece.
Lately, I’ve felt like my Substack is becoming oversaturated, and there are so many things I want to read from so many incredible creators. Sometimes, I don’t even know where to start, and I end up reading nothing at all. It’s a tale as old as time: like a never-ending TBR pile, growing faster than I can keep up with.
It’s hard to choose what to read when there’s so much to choose from.
Thankfully, I’ve developed a habit I’m grateful for. Every time I read a Substack piece that truly impacts me, I save it to reread in the future so I don’t forget about it. For this reason, I have curated a little library of incredible Substack pieces that have changed me since I created this account.
This is also my way of supporting the writers I love, and I encourage you to do the same with your favorite creators. Like, comment, share, recommend. Reach out to let them know their work means something to you. Become a paid subscriber if you can afford it.
Most readers on Substack are writers too, so we already know how much it means when we get proof that someone reads and appreciates our work.
As a writer here on Substack, it takes a long time to create these pieces. If you’d like to support my work, you can:
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10 Substack pieces that changed me
1. The Age of Abandonment by
‘Who cares what cool technologies we have, if the closest thing we’ve got to community is an online forum? It’s an insult to children to sever them from all ties and bonds, and then insist they have it better than any generation before, and if they falter there must be something wrong with them, or they just need more stuff. Yes, our world is better in many ways. Be nice if we could enjoy it. Little difficult to appreciate when we are busy avoiding and protecting ourselves from any more abandonment’.
2. embodying the world i want to live in by
‘I want to give up trying to engage the masses. I instead want to engage in real life, face-to-face community, one found beyond my screen. One that I can reach more deeply and more meaningfully compared to the limitations I feel when my thumbs hit the glass on my phone’.
Probably my favorite piece on this site.
3. Being ugly will set you free by
‘We’re encouraged to shrink ourselves but concealed from the truth that no woman has ever felt beautiful. The beauty ideal is designed in a way so that you can never reach it, supermodels continually remind us that they too are insecure. The point is not for you to become beautiful, it’s for you to always be trying, because a woman pursuing beauty is a woman who is always spending money, is always insecure and easily manipulated and most importantly, is always distracted enough to not be able to identify the real problem: patriarchy’.
4. Let Them Wonder About You by
‘But it’s hard to feel curious about anyone when you can do a quick scroll through their social media- an entirely cherry-picked version of reality that we have somehow convinced ourselves is genuine. We’ve traded depth and real conversations for surface-level familiarity and texting, and in doing so, we’ve become lazy. Mystery has been replaced with instant answers, and our imaginations have atrophied’.
5. the case for living life in seasons by
‘The conversation around balance and wellness creates a very fine line between inspiration and pressure. This fine line is something most of us are not aware of. We hesitate to give too much of ourselves to something when we feel like it, in fear that it will derail other areas of our lives if we do. The problem is that I think we end up fueling this pressure a little bit too much, instead of allowing ourselves to give in once in a while and follow the things that make us feel most alive at any given point. At the end of your life, I think you’ll look back at all the times where you gave yourself so wholly to something, as some of the most enriching experiences’.
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