There is a theme that is calling to me from the waters of my own existence, a conversation emerging between myself and god (which is just another word for my own life and the universe and everything).
The voice within is telling me to stop trying to be anything or anywhere other than inside my body and the walls of my home. There is a time to deepen the roots and a time to make fruit. This is the winter. It is time for the roots. And when the green returns, it will be only for the tree.
I am taking a hiatus from being a commodity.
Creativity is taking a sabbatical.
Catch me in the woods tending to my small treasures: my wife and my children and the art on my walls and the words in my chest and the ink in my pen dancing only for me and for god, who are the same thing.
//
I found these words (dated February 2022) in my journal this week as I muddled through beginnings of this essay in which I will tell you that I have been quiet on the internet lately but I am ready to come back and be creative in public again.
I entered this year with high hopes and ambitions. I was going to be disciplined, creative, productive, and happy. Six months in, results are mixed.
Mostly, I have been absent.
Midway through winter I got to a point where I felt like if I had to post one more screenshot of a Tweet or add one more hashtag to an earnest caption, I was going to lose my mind. More, I felt like I was going to lose my soul.
I have been quiet on the internet lately and I am ready to come back and be creative in public again.
But first, I have to get a few things off my chest.
//
First I need to talk about social media.
The internet has gotten weird lately. I don’t have hard data about this, but the vibes are off.
Simultaneously a lot of things are going very badly in our country and the algorithms that mediate our online sense of connection are becoming more demanding. Online spaces that were once flawed-but-useful loci of imperfect belonging have grown increasingly polluted with the outsized voices of bad-faith discourse.
I have no interest in shitting on what works for other people; I know that social media provides access and opportunities that often would not otherwise exist. But also, I am aware that Twitter makes me miserable. The algorithm seems hellbent on curating a timeline that is almost all bad news, where the punchline to every joke is how awful everything is. And it’s true, many things are awful. Twitter has a way of distilling the awful into concentrate and shooting it straight into my skull. Surprisingly, this has been bad for both creativity and morale.
Instagram is slightly better, but only barely. On Instagram, we attempt to share our creativity in community and our creativity is necessarily molded by the demands of an algorithm that wants to sell us shit. It’s not enough to be a writer (or a painter, or a musician, or a potter) and use Instagram as place to share your work; if you want it to be seen, you must be a wannabe TikTok star too. This is a disaster.
In this hellscape the algorithm is only pleased by words several degrees removed from authenticity. Words alone are not enough. The robot does not favor black words on a white background. If I tweet those same words and take a screenshot of the tweet and post it on Instagram, the algorithm rewards me tenfold. This is an abomination.
I know that social media is a gift of sorts, and perhaps the best tool we have.
I had to take a break so I could breathe.
//
Also in the past six months my wife and I shared the joyous experience of bringing a new life into the world. Her name is Wonder. She was born five weeks ago. (There are a few pictures on Instagram.)
In the grey months of winter I tried to maintain my online presence and be present in my life and I felt like a failure for not being able to do it all and do it well.
A moment of clarity brought the realization that I was being ridiculous.
If I were to observe a friend attempting to do all I was attempting to do in that season, I would say to them, “My dude, take a break from something. You cannot reasonably expect yourself to be the stay-at-home dad to four kids in elementary school and care for a very pregnant working wife and finish a massive bedroom/bathroom renovation in time for a home birth and also keep doing graduate school and produce a podcast and write on the internet and be active on Instagram and care for your mortal flesh and your weary mind. That’s too many things.”
So I took a break from some things.
//
For most of the past six months, the idea of sitting down at a computer or a microphone and tapping into the river of words filled me with dread.
I have frequently battled voices in my head that tell me my creative and spiritual work have no value. Coupled with the ferocious culture of bad-faith internet discourse, these voices have often successfully convinced me to be silent and do nothing.
I have had the opportunity to work one-on-one in spiritual coaching relationships with people who are navigating significant faith shifts. I know that I have something to offer here. I know that I am able to help people. I still feel awful about getting paid. I am afraid of getting swept up in the discourse about deconstruction grifters, mistaken for just another white man trying to turn a profit off the pain of others.
I don’t know how much to talk about this tension; it feels at once a necessary conversation where transparency and vulnerability is needed, and it feels self-indulgent.
The voices in my head masquerade as virtuous, trying to convince me that self-censorship is noble, that my absence is what the world needs. Those who I have worked with tell me a different story, remind me that I have something to offer. Every now and then the voice of wisdom nudges me, points out that my fear of what the internet will think is helping no one, and is keeping me from helping those who perhaps need to hear what I have to say.
I struggle to believe that there is monetary value in providing spiritual support to others, or that there is an ethical way to be paid for that work. Instead I find myself considering ways of selling out, doing some soul-sucking corporate capitalist bullshit to support my family. When I say it out loud it sounds so obviously wrong: “My spiritual and creative work has no value; there is no ethical way for me to make money doing what I love.” But I battle these ideas just the same, every day.
//
Here is another passage from a few months ago, somewhere in those long grey months. I wrote it to myself, and it’s what I am trying to remember again these days. I’ll end this essay with these words:
Try an experiment and see if you can put your hand to a page and push ink through your veins until your ego and anguish give way and you shake off the guilt-ridden aversion to creative pursuit and give yourself wholly to vesslehood once more.
Dare yourself to surrender this silly tug of war and cease attempting to wrest words from the river, instead cast yourself with full abandon into the stream and bear witness to whatever meaning chooses to make itself manifest in the presence of your surrender. Bow before the mighty weight of words that wish to flow through you and make yourself one with them again. .
(how do I give myself up to the flow? how do I find the energy? how do I find my way back to you? will the river carry me once I learn how to fall into it?)
You know the river will carry you.
The thing you do not yet know is the secret of falling, the trust in your bones to release and release and release again into the river.
Vesslehood is slow work. The work begins with radical belief in the sacredness of every last particulate instance of your own existence.
This word is holy.
Yes, even this one.
And this one.
And this one.
Congratulations on the new baby! Wonder is a lovely name. You are also right about social media right now. I think we will need to find new ways to connect to each other more direct and less algorithmic, because the algorithm is set to interests that aren’t human flourishing. We will take care of each other, we just need to figure out how we do that in a hopeful way.
Micah, I’ve been following you since years ago…when you were in Charlotte and Jonathan Martin was including all the broken who were looking for authentic faith. As a mom of adult children and fellow struggler in this thing we call deconstruction - but which really seems more like an interminable recovery - I share your frustration and your pain. I guess I just want you to know there’s a mom out here who sees you. Don’t try to figure it all out…just let your words keep coming.