I’m back after a long hiatus! Thanks for sticking with me. When I started this newsletter, I didn’t know exactly what I was trying to do, so in typical Maya fashion I decided to just go for it and figure out my mission statement later. This is usually the best way for me to work, because a shape typically emerges after I’ve put in the time and effort, and not before.
It took me a long time to accept that this is the way my head works, and trying to do the plan before the work often ends up in procrastination and frustration. Of course, there are many things you can’t attempt without a plan. Like maybe, performing surgery, cooking Thanksgiving dinner, or climbing Mt. Everest. You should probably avoid jumping into any of those activities without a plan.
My argument, I suppose, would be that the plan works best for me when it’s about possible pitfalls. I carry hand sanitizer and wipes because illness prevention and spills worry me the most. Second to those things in importance would be earbuds, a backup battery for my phone, and an extra pair of glasses. If I were scaling Mt. Everest I think I would be particularly worried about losing socks and hats and gloves. If I were making Thanksgiving dinner I would be worried about running out of cranberries or flour. If I were performing surgery—well, I just wouldn’t be, so let’s ignore that one. But when my twins were born, there were two obstetricians, two pediatricians, and multiple nurses with me, just in case. You can’t plan childbirth with any amount of exactitude, but you can plan for emergencies.
So in the context of attempting to start a project where I don’t exactly know what I’m trying to do but need to create some kind of plan, I try to plan for emergencies but leave the details to chance. Here on Substack, I think an “emergency” would be to write a newsletter that is offensive or boring, causing subscribers to flee in droves. I hope I’m a better writer than to be accidentally producing an offensive newsletter, but boring is a definite possibility.
How to avoid being boring?
My initial intent was to write a dozen newsletters and then to take a break so that I could look at what comes naturally to me. Looking back at what I’ve written about, I see two themes. First of all, Japanese study. Second, the mixed-race experience. But how to avoid being boring when I write?
The Substacks I love most are deeply personal, and I question myself every day as to whether I can do that, or even want to do that, and whether readers are as invested as I am in connecting to writers. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer myself, but I want to understand the people who write my favorite newsletters. That’s the line between interesting and boring, at least for me.
One of my favorite Substacks is from Joyce Vance, and I know from reading it that beyond her expertise as a lawyer, she raises fancy chickens and knits beautiful sweaters. This matters to me; she’s a human. Because she’s a human, I trust her voice. And yes, this also makes her work interesting, because I can see her genuine self right there on the page.
This means that in my next phase of a dozen essays, I need to be more intentional about sharing myself. If I want to write something that I myself would want to read, I have to be more interesting. I have to let you get to know me.
When I look back at the past dozen newsletters, I see something of who I am, but it all sounds so factual. What I’m hoping to do is to deliver something that is a little more emotional. You can tell that Joyce Vance loves her chickens. Her chicken posts are funny (how can they not be?) but filled with affection. She’s shown us the chicken shed she had built (compared to our chicken shed, hers is a mansion!), the various other pets and how they relate to the boss chickens, and the different colored eggs that the chickens lay. But beyond that, she writes long, complex articles that cite the actual legal documents that lawyers who work in courtrooms (as opposed to desk-bound attorneys) must draft. You can see her passion for her work, both in her legal articles and in her chicken articles. She brings all of herself to this work. That’s what I want to do.
I’m hoping to convey a lot of emotion to you: my deep love for the Japanese language, my abject fear that I simply cannot learn it well enough to use it to communicate something of myself, my conflict over how I’m seen (in a literal way, because I never blend into a crowd, whether American or Asian), my sadness over a lifetime spent pretending to fit in (metaphorically, as in trying to blend into generic suburbia so that my kids could have friends with whom they shared some level of the general culture) and still feeling like I don’t have a tribe. Yes, I think I have a few superpowers that come from always being on the outside of things (didn’t some wise Buddhist say that you only see reality when you are on the edge, you can’t see what’s around you when you’re in the middle?) but what I’ve repressed throughout my life is the feeling that goes with it. I think this lifelong self-control makes for boring writing.
I won’t be writing about chickens; I’ll still be writing about Japan, Japanese language, mixed identity, and culture. The subject matter will be the same, but I’m hoping to be more successful at communicating the feeling around all of these things. I hope I’m able to plan for emergencies, the possibility that what I have to say might actually seem boring in content, but the way I feel about it keeps me up at night.
Thanks for sticking with me, and here’s to feeling my way through the next dozen.
Welcome back to Substack, Maya! I find it difficult to continue once I stop.