Every once in a while, I get the urge to delete old playlists and social media posts, empty and re-arrange my bookshelves, that kind of thing. The latest set of these sudden impulses came at some point this weekend in New York as I admired the lives of my friends—so adult-like, so glamorous—with their gleaming Flatiron office buildings and charming walk-ups in the East Village. Perhaps trying to emulate them, I resolved to approach writing from a different angle: a little less dense, less refined.
In search of some physical artifact to mark this shift, I spent this morning at Barnes and Noble looking for a new journal while resisting the compulsion to wipe clean my already-sparse Substack (the blank slate impulse runs deep). What’s wrong with starting from scratch? Some of my old journal entries are rambling and borderline incoherent; plus, why shouldn’t I enter the post-grad no one’s reading this Substack landscape afresh? Then I thought, ‘What terrible, strange ideas.’
I still bought the journal, but I kept the old posts up (assuredly for the betterment of humankind). In an effort to stop making value judgments on passing thoughts—Is it better to leave behind these terrible, strange ideas, or probe where they come from in the first place?—I decided to mull over these whims while sprucing up my bookshelves. I think it’s natural to feel disinclined toward embracing change or evolution. If I want my writing to come across as lighter, why would I leave the heavier stuff up for others to come across?
To answer that question, I had to consider another oddity of mine: I almost always start writing things—academic papers, blog posts, emails—with the title. I think it’s fun. Sometimes the title changes fifteen times, sometimes I get it right on the first try. But when I am suddenly a mad scientist, throwing books into piles and shredding old papers as the wind howls and lightning crashes outside, the title is first to go.
One would imagine that if I can’t make it past the title, I am beside myself by the time I reach, say, the third sentence of the fourth paragraph. Not so. Once I get into the real meat on the bones, the heart of the matter, I am relieved; sure, the opinions and writing style have changed (even within a matter of months), but the essence is mine.
It’s almost as though I become so focused on the big picture, the generalities, that I fail to appreciate the intricacies that first compelled me to put one book next to the other, or to let sentences and paragraphs come together in their own way.
I’ve been on an Eagles kick lately, and New Kid in Town is probably my top song this month. Stick with me. I love the extended, techno-y chords at the beginning, the first few verses: There’s talk on the street, it sounds so familiar / Great expectations, everybody’s watching you. Similar duplets pop up throughout the song: great expectations, hopeless romantics, restless hearts—mini-adages that feel so familiar, so timeless. (I mean, there is the Charles Dickens novel; I’m not alone in my affinity).
Had I not veered into this aside, I’d have managed to connect this reflection to something I could appropriately title Great Expectations. I have not, but I will do it anyway. Perhaps if you check back in a few months, this post will show up as Hopeless Romantics or Restless Hearts. But I’d bet the paragraphs themselves, the thoughts and questions I considered, will be the same—even if I might not approach them the exact same way at some theoretical future juncture. No promises on the bookshelves, though. I’ve already got a new organization scheme in mind.