A couple of weeks ago, my personal assistant, a young man I’m getting to know and mentor introduced me to Substack.
He told me he had gone through my WordPress and liked what he saw. Then he asked me if I knew about Substack. I told him I had heard about it, but I didn’t really know much about it. So he sent me the link, and I joined.
I even found a few of my contacts, people I know, on Substack. I did a little reading, saw that people were sharing their writing, and I thought, okay, I could do this too.
But something hit me. It didn’t feel like me. It didn’t feel like home.
Now, looking back, I think I understand why.
Substack feels more like a general public place, where so many people have something to say. Not that WordPress isn’t that, but to me, Substack feels more like a magazine. There are so many voices, so much going on, so much interaction.
And I like that. I really do.
But WordPress feels different to me.
WordPress, where I put up my articles, feels like home.
I am the kind of person who looks forward to putting my articles together and, someday, having a collection of them in a book. I want a collection of short stories. I want to be able to gather my thoughts and words and turn them into something I can hold, something that stays.
I’m a library kind of person.
So WordPress makes sense to me. I like knowing that I can go there, or someone can stumble across it three years from now, and they can get a sense of my thoughts, my words, the things I have written over time.
They would be able to go through the different categories… love, friendships, life, God, gospel, and so on and so forth.
It feels like a collection. It feels like me.
I like the idea of being able to design the page the way I want, so that when people come, it reflects me. It reflects how I see things. It reflects the kind of space I want to create.
So, I’m not throwing Substack away.
I like the interaction there. I like the idea of meeting other writers and seeing what people are thinking and writing about. It’s very similar to WordPress and I have made some great friends here on WordPress. So, I’m going to explore it and see what it is.
But I also know that if I make it my main writing platform, I might eventually get overwhelmed with the need to keep up with the back and forth and everything that comes with it.
And I don’t want writing to become another thing I have to keep up with.
So, for now, this is me saying we Hello to Substack.
Let me see it. Let me try it. Let me participate.
Substack is where I can participate. WordPress is somewhere I belong.
And I think I’m okay with that.
My home is still my home.
And I hope to keep it for as long as I can.
