Is this thing on?

I've been sitting on this Substack account for probably a year now, but I didn't (and still don't) really have any major idea of what I want to live here. I'm not a writer by any means, unless you count the weird stuff I write in my notes app, post on my private Instagram, and then archive about 10 minutes after the fact. And despite the fact that I post quite a bit on the Internet, I’m a generally pretty private person with my real life, so a typical “blog” where I just…post about my life…doesn’t feel very authentic (lol) to my human experience (also lol). So, I have had absolutely no idea what to do with this, until I realized that I will SO frequently open up Twitter dot com, type up my little two hundred and eighty character prophecy, immediately decide that the Internet doesn’t need any more opinions, and delete it or throw it in the drafts. Like clockwork. Probably 40 times a day. And while that practice serves nobody, it does make for some fun looking back on my drafts a few weeks later, where I unearth gems like:

• “moaning is for losers i’m in your girls ear reciting the lyrics to the entirety of can’t buy a thrill by steely dan”

• “is it too much to ask that everyone in my life tells me exactly the moment they are mad at me and then also tells me exactly the moment when they are no longer mad at me”

• “in my luteal phase, time for my monhtly ritual of laying in the dark under 4 blankets listening to townes van zandt”

• “need someone to monitor my spotify activity and come over and bash my head into the wall if i listen to talk down by dijon on repeat again”

• “i need a necklace with a chuck e. cheese token on it”

• “i have to listen to brand new man by brooks & dunn at least once a week or my hair starts to fall out”

• “the response to ‘i’ve started running again’ by anyone who doesn’t REALLY know me is ‘wow that’s great’ but when i tell my actual friends they know that i am going through unspeakable horrors that can only be solved by putting my body through physical and psychological torture”

And, my personal favorite:

• “i swear to god sheryl crow is stalking me”

So, if you can’t tell, I have a lot of thoughts circling around in my brain at all times. My mind is a freight train speeding toward the abyss at an alarming rate. But I seldom share those thoughts anymore, partly because the internet has too many Things on it, and I don’t know if I want to contribute to the over-inundation of Things On The Internet. However, I’ve started to think it might benefit me in some way to write them in a more coherent way than a Twitter draft and actually share it with real, actual people.

I also consume media at an alarming rate. At any given moment, I am watching something, reading something, listening to something, playing something—often all at the same time in a very chaotic fashion. Haters will say that I do this to distract myself from my own thoughts in my brain. Haters are absolutely correct. Regardless, I do a lot of things, and I have a lot of opinions about them, and something about the way my brain is wired means that I have a deep desire to share those opinions.

What does all of this mean, Carly? you may be asking yourself. Well, you may be asking me, but since this is a one-way communication channel where I write and you read, I have no idea whether or not you’re asking yourself that. But I’ll still answer just in case you are: it means that I am going to write things here and share them. Sometimes they will be funny, sometimes they will be stupid, sometimes it will be opinions and feelings and things of that nature, sometimes it might be a picture of a single squirrel and nothing else. Substack is my oyster. If that interests you, buckle up. If that doesn’t interest you, please don’t tell me because I am very deeply sensitive to rejection and would prefer to live in my fantasy where every person on the entire planet loves me and respects me.

Talk soon. Well, I’ll talk soon, and hopefully you’ll be listening.