I Have a Huge Announcement to Make

If something doesn't change...

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If YOU hate getting tons of emails and don’t like being spammed (same-same), you can always do what a supportive reader did:

“I still have my yearly subscription, but unsubscribed from the emails.”

I am sticking to my Write Every Weekday promise… with a few slip ups along the way (neccessary medical days)

My goal will always be to work VERY hard for your monthly support and never take it for granted

I have a huge announcement to make…

But it’s really just for me.

I have had 2 surgeries cancelled in a really short period of time because of infections and things that are going "wrong" in my labs.

Considering I already know of at least 4 to 5 surgeries that are eventually potentially necessary down the road (aiming to slot them into vacations and breaks as much as possible, so that I can find the pieces and parts of myself that once felt 'of value' to those that I love; to consider myself watever I need to consider myself in order to keep going).... It's hard to keep going.

I do a lot of my writing ahead of time because I AM Alexander and I'm always running out of time, but that means that IF you are able to watch this uncut, raw, rambling video about how I plan to change my own brain all the way through (you should get a prize if you do), you will know that- eventually and piece by piece- you're going to start seeing a change.

(If you’re here just for words then don’t worry… the gist is still here, braided within them.)

I want you to see change in me even though you don't have to be invested in "me" and I'm not the center of anyone's universe... But maybe you'll also be able to see changes in yourself too?

Maybe we can do this together?

Do I sound like Richard Simmons?

I think a lot about how much this craft has changed.

I started out as a print journallist and then changed "with the times" by going digital (blogging, vlogging, the like) but now it feels like the times are a tide pulling their own selves back.

For example, if the best way to "hack the algorithm" on Instagram right now is to pick a 4-second video that isn't even a video showing any sort of action or value, and place a ton of words over it so that people have to read it for awhile and thus it helps your numbers... Why in the world is a space that was once founded on photos above and words below not just going back to being photos?

That's why we once loved it.

(Making a video that's bordering on being a ‘still’ is not that dissimilair.)

Everything is trying to be something else…. especially me.

One space is trying to be another, which dilutes everything back down to what it already once was, except now: We are all our own publicists, editing the most menial components of our lives as if we are the only Protagonist. (Hi. Welcome to my Substack.)

I love long form videos, personally (if I see a face talking to me, I want to pay attention), and know that - right now- if it doesn't have graphics flashing over top, and short cuts, and HD everything.... We don't care. I guess I onced loved when life was about sharing about life, not marketing it.

(Even as a lifelong writer, I can feel how vastly it’s all changed and I’m sure you can, as well. Do you also long for an old fashioned column? Or for videos to allot for time to breathe and witness and sit with the person’s thought? Or for places you go to for words to have words, and places you go to for video to have video, and so forth… or am I the only person who doesn’t like all the food on her plate to be touching?)

I have a lot of pain ahead.

There has been a lot of pain behind me, that I've just narrowly made it through.

I am lucky. I know the fact that I'm even "staring down" the roads ahead means I am blessed....

But I'm not someone who uses the word blessed, unironically. So what does someone who’s naturally ‘like that’ (optimistic about others and making Silver Lining Playbooks, but also a fatalist when it all falls down)… Do next?

I hate how much I'm saying "I" right now, and yes, I am more Wednesday Adams than I am anything else, but lately I've realized that if something doesn't change (me)... I am not going to survive what's ahead.

I don't know how many people could, and there are too few examples for us in the world doing so.

I watch every documetary on earth about an athlete who gets one surgery and keeps going... And I feel joy for them but also a profound loneliness, in a sense, because that’s just “a July” for me.

Maybe it's time I finally make my own documentary?

I'm sick of hearing that something is wrong...

But I am going to hack my brain, slowly, somehow, into believing that I can get back to the person who once... believed, at all.

(That's why I once loved it.)

Thank you for sharing in this messy moment with me. Happy Monday!

PS: If captions don’t show up on this video and you need them, please let me know. I’ve hacked captions on other platforms but still struggling here. Accessibility is paramount