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Emily Levin's avatar

I decided not to start my own Substack because of timing but also because I got honest with myself about how I wanted to spend my time here. I really love being below the water line and swimming in the comments. I love engaging in conversation someone else starts, like this. Maybe I am no a barnacle but for now that is serving me and my energy/ time.

The word I keep coming back to is “ enough.” At the Passover Seder, in the Haggadah (the book that leads a family through the stories of Exodus and other commentary around the importance of that story to the Jewish people, ) there is a prayer featuring the word “ Dayenu.” It means it would have been enough —it is a long list and each line ends in dayenu. Had God done x,y,z, dayenu. In the prayer, God goes beyond what is enough but I am struck by the repetition of it— it drives home that word like a reminder- you are enough, you have enough.

I am learning to embrace the shape of my days and years as enough. That does not stop me from doing more, it just gives me a steady foundation to consider some things gravy and to celebrate them that way.

Had Big Writer taken down her pay wall, would it have been enough? I also think quite a bit about the privilege I walk around with— it feels like big clown shoes and ridiculous shoulder pads that make me leave way too big a footprint and shove others aside. I wonder what the world would be like if we all were aware of our impact when we show up in new spaces and if we adjusted accordingly? What if we all read the room before we walked in it? What if those in the room demonstrated the best of themselves so others entering might learn the norms? What if the extended a little grace to someone trying to figure it all out?

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Ally Bean's avatar

"Choosing to never put my writing behind a paywall is a kind of abundance that’s available to me, in part, because I’ve chosen to live a small life."

Ditto. I appreciate that some people have to make money off what they write, but I don't so I won't. I'm not around Substack enough to know who the big deal writer was, but if she felt under-appreciated and that bothered her, then sounds like she did the right thing.

As for me? I am a nobody, happily so, thus whenever anyone bothers to read what I write on my personal blog I am content. That's enough abundance for me.

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