The Grasshopper Issue #77: Who Are You, Who, Who Are You?*

Do you ever ask yourself, who am I writing this for?

Oct 08, 2023

forest trees — If a tree falls in a forest…Photo by Lukasz Szmigiel on Unsplash

Since I busted my face up and quit drinking, just a few weeks ago, I have been writing like mad, cataloging my experience and the almost bewildering array of little realizations it throws at me daily.

It’s been me using my writing to help me understand these big changes and it has been a big flood of realizations and my attempts to understand them. It is mostly reactive at this point in time, just me trying to take it all in and start figuring out what the next steps are.

Pretty exciting and pretty scary. But writing down my day to day reactions has been grounding. Writing is my safe place and I’m not afraid to admit it.

But it is ironic that this safe place is also where a writer can go into the unknown, in relative safety. After all, we’re just making this stuff up, right?

Recent events have made me question the apparent safety of that assumption. Writing, like any other deep exploration, has power and a bit of a will of its own, more than a bit.

Which brings me to my theme this week. *My title is swiped from a Who song, Who Are You?. I can imagine Roger Daltry, or Pete Townsend, finding themselves in the middle of a set and looking out at a huge crowd and asking themselves that question.

I know, from experience, that a band is not a band until they have an audience and a writer is not a writer until we have readers. Until that point, we are unformed. To be a communicator, you must have someone to communicate with, before you know if what you are doing is working.

This is why my readers here know I am not a big proponent of journaling or keeping a diary. But my recent experience trying to record some big personal changes has shown me the value in it.

But it makes me nuts to think I am just doing this for myself. And I know I am not because I think it has value and I can mold it into a narrative that readers might be able to relate to, a story of redemption or some other equally deep theme.

Or maybe not. But I’ve programmed myself to write with an audience in mind and gone out and sought that audience. Here, at The Grasshopper, that audience is you. With a lot of my other writing, the topical stuff, it is less obvious who the readers are because the reach is wider.

Either way, knowing there are people out there reading this is a big deal. It’s why I encourage new writers to get your stuff out there.

But that can be a scary and discouraging process, especially at the beginning when you might find you’re not actually that interesting or the ten people that show up are there by accident, not because of your scintillating prose.

The most common challenge I see from writers in places like Substack is where do I get subscribers, how do I find readers, and how do I keep them?

It’s why the entire social media model of following, subscribing, or otherwise choosing to see more things from a writer or artist, is important. It gives the reader the power to vote to see more from someone whose voice has somehow resonated with them.

But we have to earn this. If you’re not getting any traction with readers, something needs work and that something is you and your writing skills. As someone wrote, writing is easy, all you have to do is open a vein and let it flow*.

*The source of this quote is controversial. Many assume it was Hemingway, but a quick search reveals a lot of contenders.

That’s pretty dramatic, but there is truth in those ironic words. We want to hear the real stuff, the things you feel that are important to you, told in your own voice, not the writer trying to imitate someone else who is popular.

When I started writing on Medium, several years ago, this kind of writing was new to me. I honestly didn’t get it but having a few people Follow me was interesting and I started to experiment with what seemed to bring more readers in.

And I found out it was the stuff that I wrote in my voice, the one I use when I’m talking about something I am passionate about. In my case it was outrage at the political world and the denial of climate change. That was when my Following went from hundreds to thousands.

So, because I am starting to ramble here, the message is simple. Write about things you care about, in your own voice, as awkward as it might feel. You’ll get better at it.

And for God’s sake, or whomever you want to evoke, get it out there.

One topic writers

I’m a believer in the value of expertise and focus as a writer. It is a huge driver for building a loyal audience of readers, if your body of work reinforces that reputation. We like to read people who are confident and know their subject matter.

This is particularly important if you publish frequently on specific topics, as I do. But too much focusing can be limiting and branching out is always a good writing exercise, if nothing else.

There was a writer on Medium, where self-help and side hustle stuff are still the favored subjects for many, who only wrote on the dangers of alcoholism, a topic I can obviously relate to.

She is/was a nurse and recovering and basically wrote the same article over and over again. A decent writer and her passion was evident, but after seeing her pieces almost daily, you began to feel you were watching a form of self-therapy and it wasn’t going well.

This ease of simply posting anything can reveal a writer's obsessions, which is a challenge because my obsession might just get tiresome to you. So, as usual, a degree of editing is required on the writer’s part.

I’m writing about this because a lot of my personal writing has been focused on recording a significant change in my life. And the few things I have published have been meaningful to readers, generating a lot of comments and sharing, which is fantastic.

A few years ago, when the excitement of adding followers and getting readers daily was still fresh, I might have latched onto this topic, my recovery, as a way to build an audience. These days, when I actually have stories to tell, I’m feeling very cautious about going to that well too frequently.

But there are stories to tell and I believe they have value to others, so I’m developing a new Substack newsletter going in its direction. The challenge is to find a new way to talk about topics that abound in online writing to the point where I sound like just another person extolling the joys of self-discovery.

So, my challenge is to find a new way to approach the subject. Which is the challenge in any writing, from fiction to opinion pieces. It’s that unique and compelling voice we always seek. That voice, whatever it is for you, is probably the ultimate reason any of us write here.

Having said that, here is a piece I published on Medium about the physical changes I’ve experienced recently, all positive. This will likely be the last recovery/personal growth story I publish here as I will move the topic to my new newsletter (more to come on that).

I’ll keep you posted, briefly.

I Quit Drinking Six Weeks Ago. Things Changed

The physical changes are startling

This was not casual quitting. This was cold turkey after fifty years of gradually diminishing my life from a joy in living to three or four martinis a night.

I didn’t see it that way, of course. But there were red flags, though I was extremely good at explaining them away to myself. Until the sh*t hit the fan.

I won’t go into the gory details here (and they were literally gory). I have already written about them in this article. And I am not planning on shifting my focus to an unending dissection of addiction, drinking, recovery, etc.; not here anyhow.

I’m no expert on those topics, though I have surreptitiously been reading and learning about them, just in case I ever got it together to quit. But then one day the universe body-slammed me into waking up, and I quit.

Now, only six weeks since my last drink, I am astounded at the changes I’m experiencing, both physical and mental. And I’m equally amazed at how fortunate my experience has been compared to many, if not most, serious drinkers.

I’m not going to get into that yet, because six weeks does not make me any kind of expert.

So, a bad thing happened and I quit, just like that. And the fortunate thing I mentioned has been that I’m done. I simply don’t care about it anymore. Which has my friends and family cautiously watching, waiting, and (I hope), gradually realizing this mini-miracle might be taking place.

So, here’s the reality as I see it, after all those years, all those martinis, all that money, and nearly driving myself out into the street, in my sixties.

First, physical stuff. I sleep. Right through the night, a solid sleep. If I’m restless, maybe from too much coffee or not enough physical activity, I just get up and read. But now I know I will sleep.

This is a big deal.

Then there are the effects on my body. I had a hand tremor- they shook uncontrollably, sometimes. Gone. My balance sucked and I would always look for a handrail on any stairs. Not needed now. Riding in cars I would experience vertigo, which convinced me we were about to crash any minute, making longer rides terrifying.

I didn’t even notice this had ended until I realized I was enjoying a ride with a friend and she noticed I was not constantly hitting an imaginary brake pedal.

Pretty nuts, right? These may sound like little things, but they are things that diminish your day to day quality of life, every minute. People talk about miracles like they are things that don’t happen to regular people, but I think we have that all wrong.

We think miracles are huge life changing events, you know, angels descending from heaven with divine trumpets and golden light. I don’t think so. My morning miracle is not having to steady my hands to avoid spilling coffee grounds first thing in the morning.

Yeah, really.

I forgot to mention appetite. I’m a skinny guy and was known for rarely eating normal portions. Not anorexic, just not as hungry as others. But that was the alcohol suppressing my appetite. Now I’m hungry and I finish things. I’m gaining weight, which is a good thing in my case.

There’s another thing I literally could not see. In one week three people, without prompting, told me how much healthier I looked, how my face was different, skin clearer, and eyes brighter. Honestly, that was a little weird but it happened.

That’s the physical stuff, the things that just changed without a lot of work on my part. I have added in strength workouts, more walking, and trying to get back to my pre-Covid body, which is a little longer road. But I’m not making excuses to myself to skip that workout.

If these were the only benefits, I’d still be a happy camper. But there is a lot of mental change going on and that is taking longer to sort out. It’s only been six weeks and I know that process will take longer, though I can see some of the basics.

People talk about being reborn. I’m not feeling that, but I think I can understand it. To me it feels like I’m getting to know a self I have not known for a very long time, maybe never, because that person was not around.

Ask me about that a year from now. Maybe I will have a better idea who he is, who I am. Being a writer, I am documenting these changes and I will share them here and there in the hope that they offer a reader something useful.

These changes are real and they are a big deal. Sleeping, on its own, is pretty fantastic. I thought quitting would diminish my life. It’s different but different turns out to be a good thing.

Six weeks.

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