This is true about many facets of life, but to make it about Substack in particular, the Internet in general — as someone who’s been writing online professionally for almost 20 years, it was a summer of sweet relief when I discovered that I could just (checks notes) take a break from publishing and no one would care. I went offline for 6 weeks, then came back on, and my readers picked right back up where we left off. No lasting damage. In fact, my writing was so much better afterwards.

I’m seeing more and more grasping (for lack of a better word) from people here who just seem scared of irrelevance, nervous that if they don’t constantly publish (especially here in Notes) that people will forget they exist and have something worthwhile to say.

Since I’ve written on the internet since we did it on stone tablets, I’ll tell you right now — irrelevance is just fine. Good. Necessary, even, when it’s not in your immediate sphere of who you’ve been called to be relevant to. If all you can think about is what to publish next, what you need to say in Notes so that people will see you, that’s a good sign to hop off here for a few weeks and take a little break. …Take it from someone who’s been there, done that, and gotten really burned out / messed up in the head by forgetting where my identity lies.

(Plus, it’ll give the rest of us more time to catch up with all the reading.)