Honestly feel like leaving Substack. I wish I could lock this account just in case I need to look up some references but substack doesn't have that feature. The amount of right wing content I see on my feed when I open the app saddens me. It's getting harder to ignore it. I've made attempts to quit Substack before but what held me on was intellectual curiosity really. Yet even that is no panacaea. I got active here out of curiosity but also a sense of intellectual directionlessness and wanting to see if anything could come out of here. I didn't get to explore the intellectual life at college due to my struggles there and the culture which was surprisingly insular considering the number of intelligent people there. I hoped Substack would enable me to experience that aspect I had missed out on. But I honestly struggle to understand much of the discourse here and feel out of place. I'm not even sure where to start and continue after several false starts at attempting to learn new topics. There is very little that I can truly identify with to help simplify that process. And I haven't got much to contribute to be very frank. What insights I have within me are from personal experience and observations rather than established systematic thought, the former being a less universal mode of conveyance than the latter. Last weekend I had some thoughts and thought of posting them but then I stopped. I cannot share much of these because I value my privacy and thus I am cut off in yet another way. If my thoughts were less personal and more universally systematic it would be another matter. I will probably do my own personal reading, goodness knows in what direction. I shall have to find out. But it is so confusing and frustrating to see people reading and discussing so many things you haven't read and you don't know where to go from here. And it distracts me from learning and ruminating deeply when I am mentally paralysed, not knowing where to go and looking at many different options without being able to decide and commit to a direction. Anyway if anyone wants to keep in touch, DM me and I will share my email with you.