Welcome to Millie's substack
Follow me along to read my new writings which I have yet to categorize but I promise is funny, provocative, and will make you feel better about yourself.
Sometimes you have to be around people who don’t know you to remember who you are.
That’s how I’ve always justified sharing my thoughts with strangers on the internet. Not that justification is ever needed, especially for writing.
A year ago I wrote my first play and while that one and another one I’m writing are still works in progress, I started sharing my journal entries at various readings and open mics in New York six months ago and I thought it should have a life online too.
I often receive a similar kind of reception to my writing, which is how honest and almost confessional and vulnerable it is—perhaps I’m lacking a gene for embarrassment but I don’t feel it’s that revealing (my writing). However, the permanence that comes along with sharing online is very vulnerable. And so, maybe it will inspire a community of people to say the first thing on their mind, not to the world at least, but just to yourselves. It’s like new age Ekphrasis. Oh god, I hope this is a good thing.
On my substack, you can expect and also ~hold me accountable~ (how powerful??) to share my writing. I already have a bunch of little stories and funny/clever/unhinged prose in the docket that I can’t wait to share. The more personal ones will be exclusively for paid subscribers (sorry I do have a modicum of self preservation/filter).
Now that you’ve been introduced there’s no turning back
Last week I took myself on a date, or rather paid to sit in public with my book and notebook where I’d look lame in front of the others if I checked my phone. Everything always comes back to accountability.
I was thinking, isn’t it so crazy that we sit at a public establishment and dish our entire lives out to the person we’re with, next to complete strangers.
Isn’t it also so crazy how “crazy” has become the word for everything, good or bad. I know as a writer I should be CRAZY about using more words but crazy also feels like the zeitgeist of 2023 and it’s hilarious to me to abuse it at this point.
“Anyways, my ex husband is fine … his brain tumor yeah, it’s fine … he married his fourth wife … Jan is everyone’s first favorite.
Monica is the second favorite …” -anonymous woman next to me
“Who’s Jan?” -anonymous woman’s friend
“Jan is his second wife. Monica is the fourth.” -anonymous woman
These women next to me had so many people to gossip about, I was completely envious.
And so, when you’re alone sitting next to strangers, it’s actually quite shocking (and crazy) to think of what you can over hear, all for the price of a $15 glass of wine.
Am I depraved? But who wouldn’t find sitting next to two native new york women in their 60s, divorced, debating if they even want to share their “money” with their boyfriends, laughing about their ex husbands brain tumor recovery, envigorating?
I alternate between eavesdropping on the women’s conversation and reading Sheila Heti’s Pure Colour and I can’t tell if it’s the glass of wine on a semi empty stomach or if this combination is extremely emotional. Like this might be what life is about. Which I try to define every week.
Which leads me to
I want to create sentences that are vague in some way (all encompassing) yet deep enough for every single person to project their entire existence on to yet specific enough for every single person to know and relate to exactly what pain, pleasure, phenomenon I’m describing. If I HAD to have a mission statement that would be it…ok maybe I’m still working on it.
Now that that’s out of the way. If you’re having fun, subscribe for more.