Bouquet 10 by Doan Ly
The lack of writing this newsletter has been pestering me for a quarter of a year now which feels especially elongated in pandemic-time. Besides the fact that researching and writing a regular newsletter can quickly turn into a pretty onerous task, I couldn’t figure out precisely why I’d been putting it off. After all, I love to write and I have loved some of the conversations I’ve been able to have through putting said writing out there.
It occurred to me last week that perhaps I felt I wasn’t providing enough value through Send Virtual Flowers, which is a weird thing for someone to say who started a newsletter “for herself”. But having eyes on you changes things either way. It becomes increasingly important to be able to discern what you are actually doing for you, and what you are doing for your audience. There are no rights or wrongs; just different modi operandi and if you care about doing your best then you need to be able to distinguish between the two and adapt accordingly.
For example: Does writing this and unpacking my growing pains actually feel restorative to me, or is it draining? What advantage am I gaining by doing this in public rather than in private or within specific relationship configurations? It starts to beg the question: Why do we do anything at all?
Then I stumbled across this tweet of enlightenment:
Though written in 2014, it still feels starkly relevant and finally helped me extract a broader pattern that I feel towards “content” at the moment, my own included. “Public vulnerability” was, in a way, exactly what prompted me to start writing SVF. There can be real perks to it: overcoming longstanding fears and being able to connect with strangers are among them. But does “going public” actually help you do better in private — in your apartment, yes, where it matters?
Trending
“Public vulnerability”, or being vulnerable out in the open has become one of our favourite trends. I have subscribed to more newsletters and by extension, more people’s lives and emotional dwellings than I can count or absorb. And we mustn’t forget the original forms of subscription via a simple follow across the range of social platforms that we simultaneously inhabit. There, we constantly imbibe so many details that we become desensitised to what they actually are or who we actually are.
This proliferation of public vulnerability has also increased because when done “right”, it yields high rewards. Public vulnerability therefore becomes synonymous with relatability, and relatability transforms into a hot form of social (media) currency, which oftentimes enacts a reciprocal relationship with the living world.
Having said this, I think there are some special types of content and public vulnerability that burn on their own because they are so clearly not reflections or regurgitations of popular things that already exist en masse. These might be good examples of being able to do something for yourself, and since you have done it for that reason and been meticulous with your craft, it resonates with others. A break from “content” every so often can only do you good, because you start to see through your own eyes, not the reflections echoing back through a screen.
Bridging the gap
I did a brief stint in therapy when I was 19 or so and one of the main issues that I had with even the concept of therapy was: How do I transfer what happens in this room and take it out there? I can tell you all the theory right now; I can tell you exactly why and how I understand it. But when faced with that moment, what am I going to do? How do we bridge the gap between knowing something to be factually true and experientially true; how do we take our public vulnerability and harness it in our private lives? How do we establish what our boundaries are with the ways that we sell ourselves and our lives online?
When I was with my therapist, we were boxed inside a quiet room. Being vulnerable there was posed as a way to look in, in order to get out. Perhaps there is an element of public vulnerability that is like reverse therapy where we are all out because what we’re actually trying to do is turn in.
Make your apartment nicer
It’s tempting to jump on the trend, especially when it looks so good on other people. Sharing, especially if well-received, can become intoxicating. Our metric-driven infrastructures make sure of that, to exploit the highs and the lows so that you embark on a never-ending dopamine/cortisol rollercoaster.
Sharing can lead you to places you never even dreamed of and it can also leave you high and dry with nothing left to give. No matter how much we want to connect and share, we still need to keep a part of ourselves just for us, a part that is separate from compulsion, validation and optimisation.
I have been thinking about how I want my life to feel rather than look. I have been thinking that absolutely nothing I release on public platforms will matter if my interior life, “the living room” of my apartment if you will, is fully furnished and well tended to. I often imagine myself as an old woman on a dock, and I mediate most things by whether she would give a fuck. And in most cases, probably not. But she’s an embodiment of all this; the things that we don’t globally expose and instead choose to keep.
What next?
Today’s newsletter has been condensed from a much more sprawling essay that I wrote. It is part of a wider conversation about creators, the “Golden Age” of the creator economy, public vulnerability as a trend and the rise of curators as a natural defence against the abyss of content. It explores these topics within the context of the subscription model that continues to infiltrate platforms, the growing class of creators and the divide between them.
In light of all this, I’ve been thinking about what to do with SVF if anything at all. Over the next few weeks, I’d like to beta test some different models of what this could be which hopefully makes it 1) easier for me to put together, 2) more valuable for you, 3) a different consumption experience. If you’re willing to be a beta tester and give me feedback, please let me know!
In addition, I’d also love to know how you found me or why you subscribed so I can improve this offering. For example… Have you encountered my other online presences and are looking for something similar? Different? Do you care about tech, or the creative process, or love? If so, which one?! Are you looking for professional tools or personal stories or other, please define.
From my Filing Cabinet
🌸 Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work?
Outro
I’m Emily Nabnian and Send Virtual Flowers was an attempted weekly digital bouquet from me to you about that moment the feeling strikes. It is still an experiment and therefore is undergoing some major changes, as experiments do. If someone came to mind while you were reading this, consider passing the bouquet along by sharing. If you’d like to talk to me about anything, just hit reply.