Want To Know a Secret?

Dispatch from my writing bunker.

The audio version of BIAD is on bunker hiatus and will return in September.

Shoutout out to my new friends who subscribed after seeing a very meta, very niche and slightly bitchy Substack meme I made last week. We found each other through the internet’s preeminent art form and I think that’s beautiful.🌹

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Hi friends!

How we all doing? The vibes are off their meds again.

I usually write my (wo)manifestos on the patio of my neighborhood Coffee Bean while I drink my bev of choice, a gigantic iced green tea. But last Monday, I was sitting at a table in the shade, pretending to work, eavesdropping on some awkward networking, when all of a sudden a fault line in Highland Park decided to be cunty. Tell me why I jumped up on that patio as if the best idea during an earthquake was to run?

So now, instead of leaving the house, I have been staying home to write and do the second most LA thing one can do — be delusional about chasing my dreams. The first is obviously surviving an earthquake at a Coffee Bean.

This self-imposed exile from society has been very good for me creatively. I have too many ideas that need tending to. It’s much easier to focus inside. When I meet a friend for lunch, it somehow turns into an all-day affair. Clocking people’s outfits at a coffee shop, with the way everyone is dressing lately, is way too distracting.

And I love it here in my writing bunker! I spend most of my day ruminating on the essential truth of what it means to be human in this demented age ruled by asshole technocrats and their menacing machines. I take a few breaks here and there to craft some freelance memes and make sure a massive brand’s social media posts get seen.

Before sundown, I emerge from the bunker full of weird energy that I take to a pilates class, then to the grocery store, where my built-up banter is a treat for anyone willing to talk to me. I get back to the bunker, eat dinner, and then it’s time for a little bit more ruminating, followed by a few hours of mainlining my TikTok FYP.

This bunker routine is a perfect manifestation of the cognitive dissonance that haunts me. My deep understanding of social platforms and how to game their algorithms has paid my rent for many years, and now I do it on my own terms, which I am beyond grateful for. But intimately observing social trends and the way people behave online for well over a decade is why I’m radicalized against stupidity.

This Age of Unhingement™️ would have us believe that every last drop of our creativity needs monetization. For years, I sold all of mine to make too much content at the internet’s ridiculous speed. I started writing this newsletter because I needed to cut loose and find my own rhythm. I had some ideas and wanted to see where it would all lead.

I had no idea that I was about to spark a creative renaissance in my life that has led to a radical reshaping of the way I expend my energy on the work I do to make money. Now, when I’m not bunkering down, I’m one of those people going to Trader Joe’s at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, not producing six projects with my longtime assistant, the Slack demon. A priceless development for me.

very me coded these days.

So, here’s my secret: I think writing this newsletter is the best work I’ve ever done and it’s the work I’ve made the least money from.

Here’s another secret: I don’t fucking care.

Maybe because I worked in Hollywood at the height of the streaming boom, when so much monopoly money flooded the town (RIP). Maybe because I’m the type of gal who says crazy shit like “money is energy.” Or maybe because my work ethic has always matched my delusions and that has led me to do a bunch of objectively wild and lucrative things. But I don’t think creativity and money always align on logical terms.

I did previously admit (still can’t believe I told that story) that I only turned on paid subscriptions because a psychic told me I’m too generous with my writing and yelled at me to “shake the tree.” What can I say? I gotta be me.

I’ve been a writer since I first held a pencil in my little baby hand and entered the world of make-believe. But before April of last year, I was too scared to share my own voice in any real way. Having the courage to write and grow publicly has changed me, made me feel seen, and given me the confidence to hone my craft so I can live out my bunker schemes.

There are so many reasons why I write that have nothing to do with getting paid. I write to make sense of this crazy world. I write to make sense of myself. But mostly, I write to have fun. It tickles me so deeply when I come up with this shit and I love that for me.

When I’m writing for the fun of it, I feel like I did when I was a little girl, when I would sit for hours playing with my barbies, dressing them up in character, acting out elaborate scenes involving a pink corvette, and creating a minefield of tiny plastic pumps in the high-pile carpet, a very ‘90s hazard for bare feet.

This world needs more sparkle and it needs more fun. We need to increase joy and decrease road rage. There is no cure for Unhingement, but exploring our creativity is a great home remedy.

If you feel called to write, or make music, or paint, or to do an interpretive dance, or bake pies, or craft bespoke voodoo dolls, do it. Share your imperfect creations with your people. Post them on the internet. We need you to. Even if your voodoo dolls aren’t a smash hit on Etsy, some lunatic might love them and buy three.

This summer, an authorless quote has been floating around Instagram: “The opposite of depression isn’t joy, it’s expression,” a slight rephrasing of wisdom from Dr. Edith Eger, a psychologist and Holocaust survivor whose book, The Choice, I read years ago and highly recommend if you need a reminder that we all have more control over our inner world than we sometimes realize.

The Choice is a beautiful memoir of a long life spent healing trauma, in the patients Dr. Eger worked with and within herself, after barely surviving Auschwitz. She believes ultimate freedom comes from making a choice to create and discover meaning in your own life. Being free is a choice we must make every day. “You can't change what happened; you can't change what you did or what was done to you," she writes. "But you can choose how you live now. My precious, you can choose to be free.”

There is so much freedom in creativity.

Building this space where I get to connect with you all and say whatever I want to say has been a light beam for me. At times, when there were more serious things I needed to discuss, it has been my salvation. And after a lifetime of being told to shrink myself and be quieter, it has set me free.

This is my creative practice which is why it will never, ever have a consistent format¹ or be sent on the same day each week, lord knows I’ve tried. It’s my Tamagotchi, a digital pet project that needs to be fed, and sometimes I need a few extra days to conjure up the feed.

The situation with me and my writing is like when you pee too soon at a good house party — I broke the seal, and I’m too entertained to leave. And based on this week’s dispatch, it seems I just need the right macrodose and one more trip to Esalen before I write my own version of The Artist’s Way.

These are strange times for our creativity and how we connect. I’m not immune to the devilish allure of obsessing over followers and metrics. Or feeling weird about the pressure to build a “platform of engaged users” which is just a nasty epithet for … willing audience of human beings who want to connect and like what they see.

But being myself in this little corner of the internet has magnetized so many like-minded people my way, and that has created a ripple effect of goodness in my life behind the screen. I may be in my bunker, but I have never felt less alone. That's reason enough to keep writing for me.

Less Lessons More Blessin’s™️

Liz

1. The Burn It All Down Hot 5™️ will likely return next week — I hear the Democrats are convening.