Online intimacy

Because when you stop translating your truth for other people's comfort, you don't become harder to understand. You become impossible to misinterpret by anyone who was actually listening.

Social media platforms optimize for engagement, not understanding, rewarding content that can be rapidly processed rather than ideas requiring contemplation. We're training ourselves to think in ways that maximize immediate comprehension rather than long-term insight.

It’s also what I’ve come to believe distinguishes a Substack writer from a content creator. People don’t come to my newsletter because I deliver one type of information.

They come because they trust how I see things.

That’s the difference. On Substack,

your perspective is the product.

Your lens is the niche

. And

when you treat it that way, you... See more

This is what makes Substack different: the shelf-life of a post is looonnng. Good writing gets second chances. Dormant essays can wake up. And it’s often just one share that changes everything.

It’s an organism —and it operates on relationship, rhythm, and resonance.

The person who needs everyone to understand them is fundamentally different from the person who has learned to trust their own understanding.

if you're always understood, you're probably not saying much.

We learn early that fitting in is often just a long-form apology for who you are

So this is what it means to be okay with being misread. To stop clarifying for comfort. To stop translating for people who never intended to understand you in the first place.

This is the moment you discover that belonging to yourself feels different than belonging to everyone else.