A Welcome Letter Of Sorts

Some buy shiny red convertibles during a midlife crisis. Others get tattoos. Quit their jobs. Cut bangs. 

Me? I’ve decided to start a Substack. 

I should clarify that I am not so much having a midlife crisis, as I am finding my way en route to a midlife crisis. 

Okay, “crisis” might be extreme. What would be considered a few pegs down from crisis? Change? Dilemma? Pickle? Crux? Impasse? Situation?

(Is now a good time to tell you thesaurus.com is my all-time favorite website?)

Crux and impasse feel a little too flashy, so let’s go with “situation”—which is boring and basic, but feels like something a Millennial would say and also rolls nicely off the tongue. 

I am finding my way en route to a midlife situation. 

What, exactly, spurred this on?

Well. My oldest child will start middle school next year. That’s one situation. For a long time, I’d look at glowing new moms holding fresh new babies and I’d think, I was just her. And to be fair, I’m not that far removed. We just potty trained our three-year-old last month. But I also find myself standing on foreign ground with one child on the verge of lockers and school dances. Right now, in fifth grade, there are children in his class with cell phones. Children in his class who have access to Instagram. We’re not in Kansas anymore. 

The old ladies in the grocery store might have been right. I don’t know where the last ten years have gone. Did I enjoy it enough? One day this child was smooshing his face between the crib rails to give me “pups” (kisses) before bed, and now he can text me from his watch. His feet are as big as mine. The top of his head reaches the bottom of my chin. It still shocks me when I hug him. Like wait, what? Is that your head?

Then there’s my work. That’s another situation. For the past eight years, I have been running an online space for mothers and storytellers. I do not say this lightly: this job has been one of the greatest highlights of my life, an absolute privilege, a capital h Honor. I am grateful for it every day. In the same breath, I have always known this work has a shelf life. And more and more, I am starting to sense the expiration date looming. Not tomorrow. Or even a year from now. This is less like a container of strawberries molding in the fridge and more like a can of soup sitting in the pantry. It’s still going to be good for a while, but there’s definitely a date on the label. My children are growing up, and I am, too. And I love this work way too much to keep it going past its shelf life. We’ve all watched a TV series that went on three seasons too long (cringe). I am already praying about this: God, please let me know when it’s time to go off the air. 

Sandwiched between both of those situations is another situation: I have been publicly sharing my life on the Internet for thirteen years, and I am starting to have some complicated feelings about that. I am also starting to have some complicated thoughts about Instagram. About the difference between art and content. About what it means to be a writer in 2022. About what it means to have a platform, or, more specifically, to love Jesus and have a platform. 

I’m not even going to go into the situation of aging, but let’s just say: that, too, is a situation. 

I am 36 years old, a ‘geriatric Millennial’ as the Internet fondly calls me. These are the things I’m wrestling with in the middle of the night, in between dreams and prayers, tangled up in my own anxiety and weighted blanket. 

I don’t know what’s next for me. I don’t know what this next phase of motherhood holds. I sense I am coming to a fork in the road with my own career—more books and exposure and public writing this way, something else entirely that way. I am dabbling in ideas. Exploring possibilities. I am currently asking: if Instagram continues to morph into TikTok, do I still belong there? Am I allowed to opt out? Could I find another way to share my writing with people? And connect with them elsewhere? 

Could that happen … on Substack? 

I don’t know. All I have are questions. Very few answers. 

I’m calling this Substack ‘The Second Act’ because I’m hoping this space might represent a “next phase” for me. I started blogging when I was freshly 23. (Bless.) I still have a blog, and enjoy writing there, but I am also starting to think beyond the blog, beyond my monthly newsletter, beyond Instagram. I am starting to think of a simpler life, a more consolidated space. If my oldest child turning ten is any indication, my 40th birthday will be here in a blink. When I turn 40, am I still going to be writing on the Internet? If so, what will that look like? 

I don’t know if Substack is the answer, but I’ve been intrigued by this platform for a while. I admire how this space seems to function as one part blog, one part newsletter, while making it easy to converse with readers (like social media, without the feelings of dread!). I like that writers get paid to write here, although I am not sure if or when I will ever turn that feature on. 

For now, I am simply dipping my toes in the pool to see how the water feels. 

What you can expect here: random, occasional musings about approaching (if I am blessed to live a while) the second half of my life. In many ways, I feel more settled in my thirties, certainly more grounded and established than I did in my twenties. But I still feel some tectonic plates shifting under my feet. I am wrestling with my kids getting older. I’m wrestling with where their story stops, and mine begins. I am wrestling with my work. What happens when you’ve devoted eight years of your life to something you know can’t last forever? Sometimes I wonder: who am I without this? (I know the Sunday School answer, but you know what I mean.) I am wrestling with the Internet and social media. More specifically: how both of those things are intertwined with my work, yet I feel much better when I step away from them. 

See? En route to a midlife … crisis situation. 

I don’t know what will come of this Substack. I am holding it loosely. 

Thanks for coming along for the ride. If all else fails, I guess I could just delete this and get a tattoo instead. TBD.