When I was in college I was fascinated by cryptographic and stenographic systems of communication. I was afraid to speak my mind creatively and emotionally, so I thought up convoluted systems to turn that fear into art, art that could technically be accessed by others, but not really. The codes had keys and weren’t particularly arduous, but nobody would take the time to translate them, that’s ridiculous. The notion of an audience remains a sensitive spot for me. Writing for one feels contrived, prideful, inauthentic.

I’d write sprawling love letters to my then girlfriend and I’d translate them into algorithmic color-sorting cipher/illustrations for homework. 

Ultimately that work evolved into pure stream of consciousness writing at a large scale: a few square feet of handwriting. I figured the volume was such that nobody would read it, and if they did, they likely cared enough about me not to be bothered.

Two uncomfortable situations emerged from those works, one with my favorite professor and one with Abby. In the end they both ended up liking me enough to overlook the particularly high-grit of unfiltered stream of consciousness. 

Writing for nobody or for a very select few has always felt like an authentic way to express oneself. From text based RPGs with player bases in the 10s, to private journals there’s an implied buy in to those audiences. The bar is high and there isn’t much hope for growing your readership.

I’m not Mary Chestnut, but by publishing this blog in the first place, and now by turning it into a substack, I do apparently aspire to more than my mom reading these words. 

Maybe somebody will find them funny, or at least strange.