I thought the internet was a hell hole, but...

A reflection on the first seven months of this newsletter

The first page of my journal for Jack’s English class, junior year of high school

When I was a junior in high school, I went to school for one semester on a farm in Vermont. The curriculum of the school was place-based: in science class we went outside and learned about the flora and fauna of our particular patch of Vermont ground; in English class we read New England authors writing about stone foundations of abandoned houses that we could go outside and find in the woods. In the early mornings and afternoons we spent hours working on the farm, our classes sandwiched between activities like feeding an angry mob of aggressive chickens and emptying the kitchen compost. The school was, in my opinion, a holy grail of education.

My English teacher was named Jack, a tall, bespectacled man who wore suspenders most days and inspired awe with his quiet authority, like a grand tree. Jack was one of the school’s founding teachers, and he embodied everything I loved about the place: the hard-worked hands, the integration with nature, the encyclopedic knowledge of the tasks required to run a farm, the literary mind, the wisdom. The first week of English class, Jack handed out marble-covered science notebooks and gave us our semester-long assignment: write three pages in this journal each week about anything you want. The one thing to know was this: Jack was going to read our entries each week. On Fridays, he would pick excerpts from all the journals and read them anonymously to the class.

I was not excited about this assignment. It wasn’t a diary exactly, more like a tiny private blog hand-written on college-ruled paper for Jack and twelve other students. I had never liked journaling, I did not know what to write, I might get it wrong. The lack of guidelines was particularly concerning: write about anything?

As it turned out, that semester of journaling opened my mind to writing. I never wanted to sit down and write my three pages, but once I had, I always felt that certain light joy of accomplishing something in which your heart believes. Each week the act of working through questions in writing gave me a pure satisfaction. It was important, I realize now, that I knew this writing would be read by someone I respected. There is a place for completely raw, totally humiliating free-writing, but this was not it. No, this was a place to explore on the page the thoughts that comprised my mental life, hoping they might resonate with Jack and he would read them to the class, hoping some other student might connect with my ideas. This style of writing was not overly precious—it was handwritten in a science journal—but it was also not a total shitshow. I did, after all, want to impress Jack. Every week I would feel shocks of intimate recognition listening the passages selected from my classmates’ journals, and I would feel pride listening to my own words recited to the class.

If you had told me even four months ago that this experience could be translated even the tiniest bit to the absolute cluster we call the internet in the year 2023, I would have told you to kindly STFU. So it is with absolute and total awe, and a full mea culpa, that I write this post now: a little pause to reflect on the joy that I have derived from writing this Substack in the short time it has existed and to share how I excited I am to enter the next phase of Inner Workings.

What we’re doing here

I sent my first Inner Workings post about seven months ago, under a different newsletter name, only vaguely aware of my topic area—women, I guess? I was terrified to sully my internet virginity. I was never a big social media user, mostly due to personal awkwardness, but I had gone full bore elimination at the beginning of my infertility journey in 2019, because, obviously, fuck all those baby photos and ultrasound photos and pregnant belly photos and positive pregnancy test photos. My general lack of being online means that I only hear about cultural trends second-hand and am always late to the game. I feared the internet, it was mean and wild. The idea that I would then write my personal thoughts on that very same internet was daunting.

After ripping off the band-aid and finally just publishing something online, it took me a few months to get my sea legs. I was used to spending months or years writing and re-working a single essay, and that approach just wasn’t going to work for a newsletter. I realized quickly that it was only by writing on the internet that I could figure out what I wanted to write on the internet.

The core themes began to sharpen: I am here to explore chronic diseases, particularly those that affect women and are difficult to diagnose. I am here to be the opposite of prescriptive, to instead be curious, an antidote to all those “HERE’S HOW I CHANGED MY LIFE THROUGH SHEER FORCE OF WILL YOU SHOULD DO THE SAME THING” blogs. I am here to explore work culture and productivity culture, because they have been intimately related to chronic health issues in my life. I am here to explore the terrifying seductiveness of money and power because, I mean, what drove me to be so status-seeking and to work so hard all those years? I wrote and I wrote. I wrote.

The writing itself would have been enough (dayenu, for the Jews in the house). But ultimately, it is all of YOU that has transformed this space from a collection of Rae’s personal stories into a rich universe of thought; a conversation and a community. The comments and stories you share here blow my mind every single week. I want to thank you for being the internet version of my junior-year English class: a smart, receptive, thoughtful group, interested in the ins and outs of life’s questions, unwilling to settle for black-and-white reductionism. I wrote here about the essay form as an opportunity to struggle on the page. I did not know that the internet was able to support that kind of wandering inconclusiveness, but this community has proven eager to do so. That is extremely special, and, frankly, completely unexpected. THANK YOU so much.

What’s next

I’m really proud and a little bashful to say that Inner Workings was recently featured in Substack Reads and was highlighted as a featured publication in the Substack app—a big welcome to everyone who came through those channels, we’re thrilled to have you join the conversation! Readership here is now 1,600 strong, and I feel like we are just getting started. Even as we grow, I am dedicated to maintaining the quality of conversation happening here. I literally wake up in the middle of the night and feel inspired to take notes on my phone about how I want to respond to a comment I saw the day before.

Also, I’m still scared. The internet still scares me. The idea that I might say the wrong thing scares me—I almost certainly will say the wrong thing at some point. I often write about all the ways I have been a shitty person, particularly when I was chasing money and power as a consultant at McKinsey and a startup CEO in Silicon Valley. Someone is bound to hate me. Lots of people, probably. I would like to be ok with that eventually, but at present, it makes me squirm.

I am also just starting an Instagram account, and literally the first thing I saw on there when I begrudgingly signed in was Elyse Myers announcing her pregnancy. I have no idea who this person is, how can she possibly ruin my day? Also, I dislike the idea of trying to make myself look beautiful and perfect on Instagram, knowing that the more beautiful and perfect I look, the more people will want to look at me, and also the more people will feel shitty when they look at me (isn’t the human mind strange?) I dislike the idea that even having an Instagram account might make me start framing moments of my life in terms of Insta-viability. My solution to this, for now, is that I’ll mostly be posting excerpts of my writing while sprinkling in some very low-stakes behind the scenes images from my life. I would LOVE if you would join me over there to keep me company in that wilderness.

I am busy planning for the future of Inner Workings, and the ideas excite the shit out of me. I can’t wait to share them with you. One new thing I’m starting this month for paid subscribers: in addition to receiving one of my longer, deeper, more crafted essays each month, you will also receive a roundup of good stuff that I love—shorter reads, longer reads, and even things I love IRL.

Some overdue thank-you’s

There are a couple people who share the credit for the conception and ongoing evolution of this newsletter.

My writing partner and the most hilarious person I know Alex Dobrenko of Both are True inspired me to get on Substack in the first place, and continues to coach me on internet basics. If you want a belly laugh check out this wild and crazy rant about AI. He gives me sharp, invaluable feedback on my writing every week, helps me maintain humor, and puts up with texts such as: “alex how do you do captions in substack thx."

My long time collaborator and dear friend Stephanie Davidson drew all the cartoons that serve as my header images and make these posts look pretty. She has a rad Instagram with all her witchy art, which everyone should check out: @asiwillit.

I guess it would be remiss not to also thank Jack, who first taught me how to write, and who gave me an opportunity to love writing. I still keep a printout from his English class taped to the wall next to my desk, a daily dose of Jack’s dry humor and masterful writing instruction. I have dragged this sheet of paper, along with my marble journal, through every move for the last nineteen years.

And, onward

Every essay is new start. Sitting down at a blank page to begin the next one, all the previous ones don’t matter. Each time, we arrive fresh to make the next attempt, and anything could happen.

I can’t wait to go on this journey with you. I will see you here next week.

—Rae

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📱 Are you on Instagram??? How do you manage it or, better yet, make it something you don’t have to manage?

✍️ So many of you are writers, too - how did you start? Who was your Jack?

❤️ If you’ve been here for a little while, what’s been your favorite part of Inner Workings so far? Do you have a favorite essay?

Tell me in the comments!

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