Moving On

A final post (I hope)

I think it’s time to wrap it up.

This Substack was never meant to be an ongoing blog, but a piece with a beginning and an end—documenting the experience of being what one might call “canceled,” and doing so in a way that doesn’t contribute to culture war dynamics. At a certain point in an ongoing series of posts, it’s important to recognize when to step back and say, yeah, I think I’ve said as much as I’ve wanted to say, at least for now.

Starting this Substack was part of moving on, and ending it is also part of moving on.

Over the past few months, writing about “cancel culture” related discourse has increasingly felt passé. It’s an exhausted and exhausting term, and not as hot as it once was. With each post, I hear an invisible audience whispering, get over it.

But that’s not why I’m putting a cap on this. I’ll never get over it. The impact of a traumatic episode doesn’t pass like a trend. I permanently lost friends, communities, and opportunities. I feel it now as I did then: like the death of a life. I still think about it nearly every day, and I still get swept into depressive episodes when I dwell on it too deeply or when it forces its way back into my daily life. I’m certain that not a single person who participated in that misguided attempt at community policing can say the same.

But I know it’s possible to move on without getting over it. I’ve been doing it for years. I’m sensing the need for a new phase—one in which I’m not inviting it into my life or associating with it in ways that link it to my identity.

I’m looking towards a phase of moving forward with new relationships and communities, making creative work that has nothing to do with it, not making it a public thing unless someone else makes it public for me, and just generally doing everything I can not to live in its shadow.

I’m glad this Substack has attracted people who have gone through similar experiences of excessive or unreasonable public shaming and have struggled to make sense of it. That was always my intended audience, and I’ll always be open to private conversations.

Okay, that’s all for now. Don’t fuck people up.

[Now for some housekeeping… This has always been free to subscribe to, but I appreciate that some of you have donated anyway. I’ve indefinitely paused all paid subscriptions.]