Why I Left Social Media & Accidentally Started a Substack

Some reflections and a Poem

I am probably doing this wrong.

I set out in late Summer of 2023 to focus on leaving social media and enrolled in an online course that offered me the encouragement, revelation and support I needed to refine my message and embark on a 90-day plan to accomplish my writing goals without social media. (That is a very long run-on sentence.)

No matter.

What prompted my decision? Well, I had been made painfully aware of just how much time I was wasting by scrolling, posting and thinking about posting. I knew this preoccupation was unhealthy, not to mention super-distracting and left me bombarded with information and ads I did not need.

My way forward needed to change if I was going to continue my online writing.

After the summer cohort, Writing Off Social-The Course-I had an action plan. Build my audience, widen the reach of my words, connect with readers and so on.

However, “Start writing on Substack” wasn’t on my To Do list until January of 2024….maybe. I had a lot of things to attend to in pivoting from my website/blog focus and was quite certain I didn’t have the bandwidth for learning something new.

But here’s the other thing about strategies: There is the ideal way things should be done and the actual way things can be done. Using my new planner, I began to pencil in daily and weekly steps to stay focused, but Lord knows I am not a sequential, analyitical thinker. Random Abstract processing is the way my brain works—so I’m actually usually doing five things at once to reach a goal.

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Hence, this reflection here on Substack. I’ve snuck in from time to time without any formal announcement that I’m actually here, noodling around and trying to figure things out. I could wait until I Actually Knew What I was Doing.

However, I have poems to mine and thoughts to share. So here I am, out of order and not exactly being strategic. Which is why I’m probably doing things wrong.

But something else of which I am certain: God is keenly sovereign over my life. He has His own plans in place that can only be followed by surrendering any idea of strategy, any semblance of control, any smattering of assurance that ninety days is an adequate amount of time to begin to move towards realizing my writing goals.

Many of the cracks in my days have been filled to overflowing with challenges and heartache which were not in my planner; personal losses and griefs in my immediate family, crises that have become literally a matter of life and death which are playing themselves out as I type this.

I’ve thrown up my hands in surrender and taken to my keyboard because, well, writing words is the way I process the world. I have no idea what’s ahead, but sometimes that is a good place to be. Not being able to see the way forward means we walk one day at a time. Those words are a cliche for a reason; because they’re true.

So—a poem, as promised, from my newest book “Mining the Bright Birds:Poems of Longing for Home.”¹ Because sometimes you write the poem you need.

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Exodus 13

We are not fond of the chalky

smudge, non-committal sky

that resists the tell of clarity.

We beseech the Heavens

for blue--cobalt perhaps or

robins-egg, a declarative

palette to illumine our

days, secure divine assurance

that our plans will not be foiled.

We long for clear light--glass

to mirror sun's presence,

reflect on our daily mysteries,

the uncertainty.

But we cannot dwell forever

in light. Brilliance can blind;

we must have shadow seasons

of in-between, the not-yet

of No Clear Answers, shuttered

trust of I am with you.

The sky speaks this alone, Find my

pillar of fire at night, the greeting

of each new day in a cloud.

Half in terror, half in wonder, 

we follow, as questions lead the way.

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I would be honored to hear how my words landed for you today.

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1. Here’s some background on the whys & wherefores of my new book.