In a world of parasocial relationships it’s increasingly hard not to feel like you’re always letting someone down. The truth is you are, even when you don’t intend to. I’ve been thinking for a while now about how important unsubscribing really is. Whether you are unsubscribing from hustle culture, fat phobia, endless scrolling, there is validity in unsubscribing.
I often ask myself what would you like to unsubscribe to (both literally and figuratively), and the moment I allow myself permission to answer that question I’m irrevocably hit between the eyes with guilt. Like a blunt trauma, that manifests into a world of overthinking.
Recently i’ve found myself wanting to unsubscribe to a lot of substacks, and I thought this might be interesting to share my thought process in the hope of somewhat neutralizing, or at least attempting to do so our thoughts around unsubscribing.
When I first joined substack what I loved most was curating my own newspaper of articles and writers I loved to read. It was small, it was intimate, and while I read a lot of people’s work, I told myself you don’t have to subscribe to everyone.
Without realizing, I’ve started treating Substack like every other social media platform i’ve been trained to use algorithmically. The moment someone subscribes, especially when it’s someone who’s writing I respect or like I feel obligated to subscribe back, a like for like basis. This isn’t about money or the cost of subscriptions, it’s about bandwidth for our mental load, more specifically… my mental load. It’s about honoring what keeps a space feeling intimate, somewhere to escape to, somewhere I want to be, vs another trap of my own making.
I’ve had to ask myself do I want this space to mirror Netflix with everything on demand, with an infinity of options? Or, do I want to protect this space and keep it curated for no one but myself? If the latter is true then something has to give. I have to protect my space, irrelevant of whom I might (without intention) offend.
Every journal entry i’ve made this past year ends with ‘I am a writer, I am a writer, I am a writer’. That is true if I never publish a book, I’m never featured in mainstream media and it remains true no matter how many people subscribe or unsubscribe from me. This cannot be taken from me, because I claimed it for myself and embedded it deep within the walls of my being.
I am a writer and!
I’ve worked hard to undo the belief that my identity comes from any one thing. I am a writer and I’m a content creator. I am a writer and I talk about style. I am a writer and I’m a daughter. I’m a writer and i’m a wife. I am a writer and i’m a friend. There is not one thing I am or am not. I am so much more than what I do.
I’ve told the universe i’d love to focus on my writing and in doing so it whispered back…then write. When I responded to the universe with ‘but I want people to see it, I want to be able to live off it’ the universe again responded with the words ‘then write’. There is no other instruction that has been given to me.
All I can do is write. Whatever, whenever it feels good to do so. What i’m working towards is writing without expectation.
I also know that unsubscribing is something I feel I need to do as a way to explore my own ideas outside of what is ‘trending’. To get back in touch with the pieces I want to write, the things I want to make that aren’t influenced by the infinite echo we’ve all grown so used to thanks to said algorithmic platforms. This isn’t a plea for originality, more so a plea to myself to write without guardrails of what I know ‘works’. I get equal joy writing about shorts and trying on numerous pairs for a review as I do exploring creativity in all the ways it now presents itself in my life post burnout.
All this to say, I want to be the cheerleader, I want to support others, and I am forever grateful to the people who have shown me these things in abundance. Unsubscribing doesn’t have to be a malicious action, it can also be a gentle way to recalibrate your surroundings. I’m trying to think of other ways I can shout out and support other writers I love without the belief I have to subscribe/follow out of obligation. I know first hand how easy it is for my inner child to feel hurt or left out when people unsubscribe, but adult Harry knows there’s so many reasons why someone unsubscribes and creating more space is a valid one that often has nothing to do with the writer and often more so the reader.
Most of the things I love to read have very little to do with fashion, even though a lot of my writing centres around it. I think my writing is also better (although not sure how we even define better) when i’m not reading about fashion. Since my burnt out i’ve been on a quest in my personal life to reduce the amount of noise, to remove myself from what everyone else is doing in order to carve out some space for myself to mull over my own beliefs, my own understandings, and figure out how I want to express myself in relation to what is revealed.
I genuinely don’t check unsubscribes, but knowing they are happening all the time behind the scenes, I try to tell myself in response to this knowledge; ‘I’m making more space for people who need to/or want to be here’ and my hope is that for however long you are here, you got what you needed. That a post, a sentence, an image, or a shared thought helped you feel seen, inspired you to try something, and most of all to play.
Unsubscribing doesn’t have to be an action we demonise, especially when it creates more space for us to think, and to explore what’s true in ourselves without looking for anyone else to validate us or our ideas. If my no buy taught me anything, it’s that less is often the catalyst to creating more. I’ve come to realize the smaller I make my world the larger and more expansive it becomes.
Thank you so much for being here.
Harry x
Harriet, this is gorgeous and honest. My perspective is that the energy behind everything matters so so much. I tend to overestimate what I think I can consume in a week or a month, and this leads to chronic oversubscribing, over committing and eventual over-rotating. My life always includes moments where I have to pull my attention back to myself. It's never (well, rarely) about the content, but more about me knowing my limits while trying to curate an algorithm that adds value to ME vs. me adding that tiny little "+1" to someone else's subscriber count.
Harriet; I really loved this and thank you for sharing!! I turned off all emails that show me unsubscribes not only because I- like you- want to give people the freedom to do that but I also don’t want to doubt myself or my work when someone needs that space. It’s hard not to take it personally. I also have experienced that burn out of following people, subscribing or even paying for people as part of a “I scratch your back, you scratch mine.”
I also got over that at the beginning of this year. I’ve been writing for nearly 2 years and I’ve learned to interact with the stuff that I need in that moment; which isn’t going to be everything!