Thinking about saltines

I've been having some performance anxiety about the newsletter lately.

I have trouble parallel parking when there’s a car waiting behind me on the street. “Just go around! Just go around!” I want to yell. It’s performance anxiety. I don’t do well with an audience. When it’s just me in the car, late at night, I can swing that baby into a tight spot, no problem.

I’m having some of that same performance anxiety about the newsletter lately. I migrated to Substack because it’s the cool place for writers to be at the moment. Roxane Gay is on Substack. You can monetize your newsletter on Substack so that you can (gasp) actually make some money as a writer. I get lots of e-mails from Substack about how to grow my subscriber list and promote my newsletter and it suddenly seems like a lot. When Friday and Saturday roll around and I start thinking about what I might want to write about for the newsletter, I find myself doing a lot of second-guessing. Is this the kind of topic that will help “grow my readership”? Why would anyone want to read about that? You, Robyn Ryle, are no Roxane Gay.

This phenomenon is especially ironic because normally, the newsletter is the least anxious sort of writing I do. I know who my audience is. They’re mostly people I know. A lot of them live in the same town. What would Jane like to read about, I sometimes ask myself. Or Ruth? What do I want to say to my people…my community?

Sometimes what I really want to do is rant. And there are oh-so-many rant-worthy topics in today’s world. I could write a whole series of newsletters ranting about grocery stores (for example, that our Kroger seems to stop carrying any items we regularly buy and don’t get me started on the remodel). Or the restaurant scene in Madison. Golf carts (oops, no, I don’t like them). Loud motorcycles. That’s just the beginning of a very long list.

But then I think about the people who will be reading. Will a rant really make them feel any better about their day? Sure, it feels good to be vindicated, like, I’m not alone in being really angry out about how saltine crackers just got smaller and fewer to a package one day but cost exactly the same, as if no one would notice! Hello! But it’s a shallow satisfaction and really, grumpy people don’t enjoy company.

So I try to think about something more positive to write about, which does not come naturally to me. Yes, I am a hopeful person, but I still have a lot of crap to complain about on a daily basis (just ask Jeff). And there are many things in the world to be critical of—things that are much more important than my saltine crisis. Sometimes, I write about those things, even if I’m not sure it matters one bit. But here, in my newsletter, in this little space, that’s not what I want to do.

One new habit I added during the pandemic was to make a different kind of reading and listening part of my daily schedule. I started reading poetry first thing in the morning, instead of endlessly scrolling on my phone. Lately, I read essays by Anne Lamott. I found new podcasts like Brene Brown’s Unlocking Us and Krista Tippett’s On Being. These stories fill up a part of me I didn’t even know was empty. I’d say it’s like going to church, only all my experiences of church were not that great.* These podcasts and writers make me laugh and cry. They’re why I have to interrupt Jeff while he’s working on class prep or grading to tell him this very interesting thing I just learned. They expand my world and make me feel a little less alone in the best way. The listening and reading makes me better.

Maybe I’ll get more subscribers or maybe I won’t. I can only write to the people who are here now. I want to write a newsletter that does for my readers the same thing those essays and poems and podcasts do for me. That morning or afternoon or evening pick-me-up that I didn’t know I needed. I’m not a poet and I’m not Anne Lamott or Brene Brown. But if I can pass on just a little bit of that same feeling, that’s enough for me.

Thanks, as always, for reading,

Robyn

* Church was not that great except for getting to do handbells. Handbells were awesome and one of those things I don’t know if anyone even does outside of church, but they rocked and if anyone wants to do some secular handbells, I am there for it.