Hi everyone!

 

First some news: starting with the next one, I'll be shifting to the Substack platform for publishing this newsletter. The newsletter will continue to be free, and I have no plans to change that. You do not have to do anything; you will automatically come along (unless you unsubscribe).  

 

I’m making this move for a few reasons. I want all my writing to live together somewhere, vs. each email disappearing once it’s sent out—now you can read the archives! Substack makes it easier to share one’s work. It allows for fun, multimedia things like podcasts as part of newsletters. It allows for an income source if I ever decide I want to use it that way. And I can use my actual name as my URL! My personal site is emilyonlife.com, because emilymcdowell.com was originally the home of Em & Friends; therefore the URL of my own name will forever be the property of the brand and its new owners.

 

But the main reason I’m making this move is an emotional and energetic one: Substack is a platform for writers.

As a kid, “writer” was a key part of my identity, essentially from the day I could hold a pen. From ages eight to eighteen, it was a foregone conclusion that I would go to college, major in English, and become a writer—and not just because in the 90s, there were seven jobs to choose from. I did go to college and I did major in English, with a concentration in creative writing. My dream, my plan, was to write creative nonfiction: essays and memoir.

 

In the spring of my senior year, I applied to a very prestigious MFA program for grad school. Wrote all the material, got all the recommendations, did the whole extensive song and dance. And then, a couple of weeks later, I withdrew my application. I told everyone I’d decided I didn’t want to take on any more student debt. I could learn to write at the school of life, I said. If I was going to write creative nonfiction, I’d find a way to do it without an MFA.

 

None of this was untrue, exactly. I did already owe a lot of money for school, and I did question the wisdom of owing more. But the real reason I withdrew the application wasn’t about loans at all. I was afraid I wouldn’t get in. I was afraid to not be good enough at the thing that felt like the most me thing. And I was afraid of what I believed this rejection would mean about myself, my abilities, my worth.

 

So I bailed on grad school. And then, for the next twenty-five years, I held the following jobs: proofreader, ghostwriter, writer of marketing materials, writer of strategy presentations, writer of banner ads and newspaper ads and commercials, writer of greeting cards, writer of a book based on my co-author’s research, writer of maximum-length social posts, writer of random thoughts and ideas for The Internet.

 

These things are all real writing; I don’t mean to suggest they’re not. But I was always careful to make writing only PART of my job. Sure, I write, but I also do art! I do business! I do strategy! I run a company! More tellingly, I was never willing to own being a writer, because in my mind, this distinction came with a certain amount of pressure to be extraordinary—to have a world-changing talent, to be deemed worthy of literary prizes, to make a bestseller list.

 

Said another way: I believed that my success or failure as a writer—and even the identity of “writer”—was not mine to determine.

In his book Turning Pro, Steven Pressfield writes about the concept of the shadow career. According to this idea, when we’re terrified of pursuing our truest calling, we’ll sometimes take on a “shadow calling” as a substitute. This career is something related to the real calling; it requires some similar skills, it’s close enough to what we actually want that it’s easily justifiable, to ourselves and others. It’s calling-adjacent. But there’s one key distinction: a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, eh—who cares!

 

If you don’t really try at something, you can’t fail at it.

 

When I first read about shadow careers a few years ago, I felt embarrassed at how accurate it was, like when you read all the symptoms of a diagnosis and go “wait, so this isn’t just my personality?” Em & Friends was not a shadow career for me—it did, in fact, feel like a calling—but the decade I spent in advertising prior to it absolutely was. And a lot of the work I’ve done falls into the “shadow” category.

 

When I brought my writer question to Holly, she said, basically, “duh,” but in a very kind way. And then she said, “I’ve always thought your writing is like plants growing through cracks in the sidewalk. You spend all this time and energy doing all this other stuff, but your writing always finds its way out, almost in spite of you.”

 

I was like “but—" and then I thought about having written probably fifty thousand words in Instagram captions.

I don’t know if it’s menopause, or breathwork, or being diagnosed with another thing that might kill me, or psilocybin, or the 37 books I’ve read about transition, or my spiritual psychology training kicking in 12 years later, or all of the above—but this spring, there has been a shift in how I think about writing, and my relationship to it. And it is this:

 

Everybody has a thing.

 

It might be a “creative” thing like writing or making art, or it might be sailing or parenting or teaching or or or. (All of which are also creative things.)

 

Maybe you know what it is, and maybe you don’t yet (but you probably do).

 

When you do the thing, it makes you feel alive. Or, when you don’t do it, part of you feels dead.

 

The thing comes with an inner knowing that you are supposed to do it, not because anyone told you to, but because it’s inseparable from you. It’s part of what you came here with. It is one of your factory settings.

 

The point of doing your thing is not to become an expert, or to make a living, or to even be good or bad at it.

 

The point of doing the thing is not an outcome.

 

The point is to do it, regardless of other people’s approval or disapproval.

 

The point is that the thing is part of your you-ness. And one of your core human responsibilities is to honor and allow this you-ness.

 

You can only achieve this by doing the thing.

 

Knowing what your thing is and not allowing yourself to do it is self-abandonment. It’s finding a suitcase of gold bars and deciding to leave it on the bus. 

 

We cannot control the outcome of our offerings to the world. Our culture does its best to squash and judge creativity in all forms. This will not stop happening. And it is inevitable, when any of us puts work out there, that it won’t be “good enough” for a big chunk of humanity.

 

But if, year after year, we reject our own selves first—if we don’t grant ourselves permission to even try the thing—we become the executioners of our own spirit.

 

I do not want to be on my deathbed, looking back with regret at my un-lived life, at the work I didn’t even try to do because I was afraid it wouldn’t be good enough. I don’t want to look at my un-done thing and think: you did this to yourself, you dummy. 

 

For forty years, the small voice in my heart that never shuts up, by which I also mean my intuition, has been saying you are a writer, you are a writer.

 

And I have decided to care more about honoring the small voice than I care about hedging my bets.

 

I refuse to spend any more of my days breaking up with the world before it has a chance to break up with me.

 

I no longer have a desired outcome, beyond showing up and writing. Me not abandoning me is now a more important goal than me making a bestseller list or even me impressing you.

 

So the world can break up with me, if it comes to that.

 

Let it. I love my own company.

 

As always, thanks for being here. See you in a couple weeks, from my new home on Substack!