a year of Internet Bedroom

writing on substack for a year shocked the hell out of me and honestly changed my life

When I started writing Internet Bedroom for real in December this time last year, I had a posting schedule (Wednesdays, because I’m a Wednesday Child) and not much else.

I knew I wanted to take the pressure off myself, to create a space where I could be creative and enjoy it, to have time in my writing life for my own expression. I freelance and ghostwrite and edit full-time, so all that can really take over if I let it, leaving no room for the creative projects that I tell myself I want to do.

our patron saint, Anna Nicole Smith painting a Powerpuff Girl in bed surrounded by stuffed animals

So I just started where I was at. Every other Wednesday at 5 p.m., I promised myself I would have something to post here and I would put real effort and heart into it and not shy away from saying what I wanted to say. Originally, I had planned to build up to posting longer essays that I would put behind a paywall, but by the time the first of those longer essays came spilling out of me, I didn’t want to keep it a secret.

I wanted everyone to read it. And I’m glad I did because writing that essay changed my life as a writer and an artist.

I’ve never been really honest as a writer. And being a ghostwriter is the perfect guise for a dishonest writer like myself because it allows me to slip into other people’s stories and tell them and leave no trace of myself behind.

My reasons for being a dishonest writer are many and none of them are really that good. Scared of offending, scared of being seen, scared of this man who came into my life when I was three years old and convinced my parents that he should raise me (that’s a story).

So I kept putting off the writing I knew I could do or knew I truly wanted to do, hiding the honest part of myself away in burn out and overachieving and bad relationships and friendships. Our other patron saint, Joan Didion, once wrote that it’s easy for writers to deceive themselves and she was right. It takes one to know one.

But there is an intense pain that comes with being dishonest as a writer. Something builds up in you and you end up crying on your floor wondering what you’re doing wrong and why you can’t save yourself. At least, that’s what I did. Until I got too tired of trying to keep that part of me that knew the truth — that’s always known the truth — at bay. And one day, when I was sitting in my sister’s living room with my phone set to Do Not Disturb, she just came tearing out of me and I couldn’t stop her.

I thought to be a writer (and especially a writer on the Internet), I had to create a persona, a brand, a cohesive front that could be used to sell things. But after writing on Substack for a year, I was shocked to find that what resonated most with people wasn’t my writing that was carefully planned out, branded Internet Bedroom girly cult, perfect thumbnails and pictures culled from Pinterest.

What really hit were my essays. The writing I meant to my core. The writing I thought people would be least interest in. Because it was honest. Because it was complicated and ambivalent and didn’t come with clear instructions for what to do next.

But those were all the reasons you all loved those essays and started long conversations with me in the comments and over DMs and shared my writing with your friends and your readers and pulled out passages you liked and showed them to other people.

I didn’t know that was possible. I didn’t know that the Internet wanted what was true or real anymore. I didn’t know that people still read sentences and marveled over them, like you’ve done for mine. And I don’t know how I can thank you for changing my life and my trajectory as a writer and an artist.

There are many talent writers on this platform. I have less time than I would like to read everything they post, but whenever I spend time with them through their words, I am always grateful. And often, I admire how they can turn out high quality work week in and week out. I am not so capable. I don’t have the biggest following on here by a long shot. I’ve never had an essay here go viral or be shared thousands of times. But none of that matters to me anymore because I get to come to this place and write what I want to write, what I feel I need to write.

I don’t have a big strategy for increasing my 2025 metrics on Substack. I pretty much have exactly what I started with: a posting schedule and a few ideas. But I also have something else now, that thing everyone looks for when they’re an artist. I’m not going to tell you what it is. I think you already know.

So thank you for being here, thank you for allowing me this space, thank you for showing me that there are people out there who want me to be honest. What an unexpected gift.

No matter how long you’ve been here, I would super love to know what you want to read from me in the next year, so ya know, click the buttons: