from ❤️🔥 Jess:
I finished my book!! All the expected caveats apply: there are still edits to do, layout and post-production, and then whatever surprises pop up. But, as Jaime Green wrote in her last newsletter, the project has flipped "from 'I do it, granted with some help' to 'other people do it, granted with me still hopefully a bit involved.'" Now, it's not me doing most of the work.
It feels so good to be done. So good, in fact, that I've done basically nothing since then. I haven't even been writing my morning pages. I just don't know what to write about anymore if I'm not gnashing my teeth about this book. I don't have a new project.
Which explains why I dove back into streaming. I've been doing crosswords in the morning, teaching myself OBS, and this morning, I've been working on setting up to stream on YouTube instead of Twitch.
I'm not sure I belong on Twitch. There are makers and writers, yes, but the numbers are so small. Most of the time I look in the crosswords category, they're not even doing crosswords. I'm not sure where I fit.
On Twitch, it's about being live. This is, I believe, the biggest cultural difference between people my age and those younger than me. I remember when Snapchat came out, not understanding why I would want my content to disappear. I still have my blog archives going back to 2002. They're not online anymore, but I still have them.
I'm a documentarian, an archivist. The culture today feels too ephemeral for me.
YouTube is already where I save my streams. Not all of them, but the ones worth saving, the ones that teach. (There's also my 2017 vlogs that I can't decide whether to make public again.)
I probably won't make any decisions today. My life is one long exercise in not making a decision today. When you've never felt settled, it's difficult to know what to look for. I never feel like I belong, so I question every choice.
Even this newsletter doesn't feel like the right choice anymore. As more and more writers move their words to your inbox, I worry about being intrusive, annoying. I worry that I've lost my way. And I don't think back is the way to go.
❤️🔥 Jess
Jess Driscoll
Your internet penpal
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