What We Got And Will Get

This is post number 48

Photo by Megan Watson on Unsplash

109 — The number of subscribers

48 — The number of posts in this substack, plus cross-posts

3 — The number of months since the first post

1 — You are the one. The one who matters. I’m writing for you.

A whisper from the past

It feels so remote now. Just a distant memory. The time on Medium, I mean, writing often and enjoying the connection with people. Then, suddenly, it was lost. I had written about it for everybody to see and enjoy with me the abstract beauty:

1–50–800, My Love! (now on Substack)

Okay, a bit too abstract for some, but while writing it out of a genuine wish to celebrate how things were moving forward, feeling trust in the relationship, I clearly felt, by then, a snake in the paradise.

The new numbers remind me of the old, but nothing is really comparable. Only the potential fragility of it all. We cannot rely on a trustful atmosphere to last. I suppose that it takes two to tango, but still, life is not an eternal dance on roses.

The smile and friendly laughter of today

As always in social relations, it is difficult to predict every reaction to every move, and being social means being observant, adapting, trying things out and being prepared to adjust. Finding a common harmony. Creating a community, a common sense and way of thinking, to supplement the individuality that still must exist in order to keep the spark in the relationship alive.

Trying to make you smile. And think. Showing off a bit, now and then, trying to sound wiser than I am, just to get a moment of attention. But then being honest, explaining my shortcomings and giving room for you to feel valuable.

Laughing together, when something is funny — laughing when it is weird, even though not so funny, when thinking about it. But laughing for the reason of finding communality, the way that is ours, together. Friendly, as friends are.

One in a hundred is more than one in a million

The uniqueness in small circles of people is that we can get closer to each other. We can talk straight to anyone in the circle, no filters or hierarchies are needed, no permission to speak. We just speak — and listen when being spoken to.

Everyone is larger this way, allowed to grow even further by being heard and seen, by contributing and being remembered.

Growth is within. Giving room, making space, allowing you to fill that space, is growing all of us.

Still, we grow in many directions, are part of many circles, each of us.

We are the one in a hundred in some, the one in ten in others, and there are circles with just two. You and me. Or one. Room for solitude.

Each post is its own circle, a social event, a place, a time — a circle in the bigger circle of the publication, which itself is in the circle of the known universe, that part of the blogosphere that is called Substack and which you have seen. And this, again, a circle in the full universe of writing.

How great isn’t it that we can zoom in on the circle, the attention level, our mind just now has the capability or wish to focus on.

Forever evolving

Nothing stays the same. Even such an obvious measure as how I see Substack has changed. Not knowing for sure from the start what it was, even though I had heard a lot of it, I soon found out that whatever I did know — was wrong.

I thought it was a newsletter, email-based, with a possibility to read the newsletters online as well. As I had an account already for more than a year before I began writing here, I had noticed that subscribers would show up by themselves, and that I would be recommended other substacks when subscribing to one.

But the finer details in how people interact at Substack, making it a community more than a list of newsletters, that was new to me, something I have learned.

Also, the many dreams of becoming famous, gaining a huge followership and earning a lot of money, has turned out to be more outspoken here than I had expected. But in hindsight, I should have known. The paradigm of the Internet is like this now — about being someone there, not just using it.

The next thing to learn is in progress, for my part. I want to see if I can connect the different worlds I visit, the different social media, including Substack. In a subtle way, though, but what effectively stopped working on social media a while ago — the links between them — is still technically possible, so I want to see if putting a link to a Substack post on other media can make some people click on it, and read the article.

Internally, on Substack, there are about 20 million people I still don’t know — room for a lot more socializing :)

Looking forward to the next 3 months, the next 100 subscribers, the next 50 articles — and with you always being in the centre of everything, my reason for being here.