I’ve currently written a total of 81 posts and 63 current drafts. My subscriber count sits at somewhere close to 180 and my follower count is somewhere around 300. Some may consider this a success. Some may think it’s not enough and proceed to send me direct messages with offers on how to 10x my subscriber count.

A big part of my growth has come from Substack Notes and it wasn’t intentional. I found a home on Substack Notes because it was the place where I edited the least. If you’re anything like me, you have probably attempted to write a multitude of posts, only to give up after the 20th edit. The 63 current drafts I own have had a multitude of edits. So many that I doubt I will ever post them. They no longer have my voice but a carefully curated version of it, one fit for consumption but not connection.

And that’s why I appreciated Notes. I saw single-line statements without capitalization and without the nuance of grammar. Equally, I discovered prophetic statements that could easily belong on aged parchment. But most of all, I love the pictures. Those snow-covered photos of New York, mountain views of India and cats. Lots of cats.

A note also gave me something that I don’t think I really considered an aspect of Substack: community.

Here are the few people that I started to interact with, and some of whom I’ve even started conversations with.

RM Greta is quite possibly my Substack bestie. I honestly have no idea how I stumbled across her work, but it was definitely fiction-related. Possibly even fan fiction related. If you haven’t heard her work, I do urge you to. No one post is the same and I love her for it.

Pete Kemery writes like how I’d like to write and has lived adventures like how I’d like to live. I don’t know if my mental image of a bohemian rock climber is apt but until I meet him in the flesh, that’s what I’ll see.

odie with the sunset photos and sometimes a woofer.

Melissa Clements because I aspire to make a living while creating art.

✧ brooklyn 𓆏 channels my internet nostalgia. Also cat pics.

The Orbit because nostalgia once again. The 90’s and early 2000s were more colorful and their feed is proof of that.

kirby is a bright, enthusiastic bubble in my Notes feed. Also cat pics.

daneen <3 posted my favorite essay of the year and has the absolute worst comments thread thanks to it.

Eric Kowalczyk takes beautiful, beautiful, photos.

In Otter News because otters. Steve is a favorite of mine.

Real Japanese Aesthetics for their insights into life in Japan, beyond the nostalgic and fetishized filters of pop culture.

Phyllis Tulaszewski drops photos of her meals that make me reconsider my distaste for cooking.

gina hasn’t written a lot of posts but I’m still obsessed with the girl who never speaks and being labelled as sensitive made me numb.

There’s many others but I’m tired and I’ve eaten a bag of cookies. Also, I fear I’ll run out of memory if I open more browser tabs.

Follow these people, or don’t. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you find your voice on whatever platform you’re on, and don’t let anyone convince you it doesn’t belong there.

Be poetic.
Be plain.
Be both.
Be neither.

Be detailed.
Be vague.
Be exact.
Be enough.

Be structured.
Be scattered.
Be organized.
Be improvised.

Be original.
Be obvious.
Be new.
Be surprising.

Be loud.
Be quiet.
Be opinionated.
Be open.

Be neat.
Be messy.
Be careful.
Be careless.

Just write.

I won’t pretend to be an accomplished writer. In fact, I most likely have nothing new to say. A million monkeys with a million typewriters could do no worse. That’s the point. Mediocrity is my jumping-off point.

Too long have I labored on an idealized version of myself, as a writer, a connoisseur, a critic before a creator. But how can I possibly compare myself to those who have spent years in the craft, or those who simply have a talent beyond my current reach?

I don’t mean to sound dreary. I don’t mean to require pity. I simply mean to say: I stopped caring. You could, too.

The ute had been parked on the street the night before. Darcy was certain of that.

He stood on the footpath with his hands on his hips and looked up and down the road. The street was quiet. The neighbours’ cars sat exactly where they always did. A magpie watched him from a power line, considering mischief.

The ute was nowhere to be seen.

Darcy walked to the end of the street, then turned and walked back again. He checked behind the telephone pole, though he knew the ute would not fit there. Still, it paid to be thorough.

“It’s got to be here,” he muttered.

He returned to the house and stood in the driveway, frowning and playing with his nose ring.

“That’s odd,” he said aloud. “Very odd.”

Darcy walked into the cafe. The disheveled owner of the café greeted him with a loud “G’day!”. “Have you seen my ute?”, asked Darcy. After explaining what happened, the two men used their combined eyesight to look farther up and down the road.

“Did you check behind the telephone pole?”. Darcy looked at him and nodded. It was one of the obvious first places.

After a moment, Darcy reached for his phone. If anyone could make sense of this, it would be Baz and Dazza - local lads with a reputation for finding things.

They arrived promptly, hands in pockets, mullets blowing in the wind.

Baz surveyed the driveway. “Right,” he said. “First things first. The ute’s not here, is it?”

“No,” Darcy replied. “That’s the problem.”

Dazza nodded. “Not in the garage either.”

“No,” Darcy said, “We don’t have a garage”.

Baz scratched his chin. “You didn’t move it and forget?”

“I would remember that,” Darcy said, a little defensively. He’d only had two beers this morning.

Dazza walked to the front window and looked inside the house. “Just checking,” he said. “It’s not in the lounge room.”

“Of course it’s not.”

Baz wandered into the kitchen. He opened the fridge, glanced inside, then closed it. “Not in the fridge.”

“Why would it be in the fridge?” Darcy asked.

“Had to rule it out,” Baz said. “You’d be surprised.”

The three men stood in silence and looked at each other quizzically.

At that moment, Darcy’s daughter appeared in the doorway with her backpack and a half colored drawing book.

She looked at Baz and Dazza, then at her father.

“Daddy,” she said gently, “I think your ute was stolen.”

The words hung in the air.

“But by whom?” asked Baz and Dazza.

This absurdist attempt at a detective story is dedicated to the kids in the neighborhood: Ritchie and Nova.

Here lies a preview of 56 drafts. This is the most current that have gone through edits.

I haven’t published them, not because I’m editing them to perfection, but because I haven’t quite figured out what I want to say. I’m struggling with each because in the process of writing I find I sometimes contradict myself. Or maybe I find that I want to say more. Maybe I want to say less. All I can say for sure is there’s something missing.

Here’s what’s currently missing for each.

And then I turned on the TV and realized I want to be a clown.

The actual title is cutoff for some reason, likely because it was recently edited and Substack forgot to auto-save. Yes, that does fill me with some anxiety but I’ll ignore the desire to quickly hit the backspace and check.

This post focuses on how our career goals and future lifestyle aspirations are influenced by the television we watch, or any of the various forms of media we consume. It’s based on a (likely misremembered) comment by Craig Ferguson on growing up in Glasgow and discovering there’s more to life than his father’s civil service job in the postal office.

I can’t find a natural end but suffice to say, I once considered having a career as a clown. I liked to make people laugh. They stopped hurting me when I did.

Substack sucks sometimes.

We’ve seen the various posts about Substack and Enshittification. We should already know it’s coming, if not already here.

And yet despite everything, we still find ourselves using this. Why? Because it’s not the product but the community we’ve found.

I didn’t care about racism until it affected me.

This is a tough one. I don’t know where I’m going with this but I do wonder why this year I’ve grown to become more attuned to racial commentary. Don’t get me wrong, as a brown man, I’ve faced my fair share from many different groups. Whether it’s the Americans that laughed at me for eating Roti in the school cafeteria, Māori that told me to go back to India or the Fijians that hurled insults after the 2000 coup d'état.

But why then did I look the other way when seeing it happen to others, to other groups, and other friends? I know the reason and maybe I’m just trying to intellectualize it rather than accepting my own bias.

It was better back then. We had less brown people.

Not much to say here. I just had a short poem I was working on about the nostalgic phrase and how it wasn’t necessarily better for all. But we didn’t have Instagram and Facebook so maybe it kinda was?

I can probably post this one but it’s rather angry and I don’t personally like it.

AI doesn’t create slop, you created slop because it sells.

Slop existed pre-AI. The algorithm and the incessant desire to commercialize every aspect of our lives turned art into a paid side hustle and open source software into paid Software as a Service. AI is just making it easier.

I find legitimate uses for AI. Use it very day to structure verbose text into something my dyslexia can understand. I use it for internet research and it’s great for it, so long as I actually verify each source.

I can’t end this piece because I don’t quite believe it and I don’t know why?

The minority tax of educating the ignorant because we’re told to.

Most DEIB programs are a burden on the very people they hope to help. There’s an expectation that you should somehow educate those around you of your “plight” or the reason for the program’s existence. I presume this is similar to how many women feel like they shouldn’t have to educate men on their bias.

Either way, I don’t quite have a strong statement here. I’m just lamenting on being tired.

The Interstitials Part II.

If you don’t know, it’s about to be Christmas. I wanted to add another layer to an older post about the people that fall between the cracks of family, friend or colleague.

I just don’t think I have more to day that wasn’t said before and the only reason or this is because I genuinely don’t like what I previously wrote.

The interstitials

Nav Rao

·

December 11, 2024

Read full story

I’m a man and I hate myself enough.

I see a lot of posts that deride men and, considering the many rich and powerful men that currently exist, rightfully so. But at the risk of pulling a #notallmen I do want to share how I feel about its potential impact on a generation of would be men. Sometimes it feels less educating and more alienating.

I just don’t know where I’m going with this.

Maybe you do?

If you have ideas on each draft, reach out. But for now, here’s my post on the many posts I have yet to post.

If you want to be a writer, you must write on paper. With a pen worth more than a standard Bic. Perhaps a fountain pen, just never your thumb or forefinger tapping on glass.

Don’t use your computer. That’s for plebs. If you must write, it should be under perfect conditions: hunched at a desk in a silent room, lit by a warm halogen lamp or, better, candlelight that flickers and dares to never again.

Your pages, of course, will lie in reams across your desk and your bed, scattered in a way that suggests genius or madness. Ideally both.

If you must have a laptop, make it an aging Lenovo from the pre-widescreen era, the kind with keys that clack like plastic typewriters.

And you must, sit cross-legged on a futon while it warms your thighs and threatens your posture.

Or perhaps you’re the tortured soul with a Moleskine on a rattling train, struggling to write as the driver struggles to keep it steady.

And then there’s me.

Seated in a café that’s too loud, legs slowly roasting under a sunbeam that refuses to shift, my phone sitting at 24% battery (19% after edits) as my only writing tool.

Lo-fi beats with a touch of jazz murmur in the background, but only because the speaker closest to me doesn’t work properly.

For a long time I romanticized the experience of writing, thinking the words would flow with the right conditions, in the right space and on the right topic.

I’ve since become less precious about it. I realize the moments and thoughts are many, some written for later and some, like this very post, written for now.

The aesthetic beauty of a candlelit typewriter will always beat a glowing rectangle and a hunched back. But writing isn’t about beauty. If it were I wouldn’t call myself a writer.