What Even Is a 'Number One Feeling?
Origins and intentions for this newsletter
My loves, it’s my fifth consecutive week with an entry on this blog-cum-newsletter!
I want to make plain my motivations and intentions behind this newsletter. Let’s get to the ‘lore first.
The Origin
Autostraddle.com is the premier online journalistic platform for queer and trans women. It is hugely successful now, and I’m proud of its growth. But I first knew the outlet as Automaticstraddle.net in the mid-2000s when I was deep in my fandom for The L Word (2004-2009). At that time, they were known for their hilarious and irreverent recaps. I gobbled up the weekly recaps by co-founder and then Uni student Riese Bernard. She journeyed me through her elation, disbelief, disappointment and irritation with the show. Within each recap, Riese would have a ‘number one feeling,’ which could be a character, a fashion statement, dialogue, an acting choice…you get the picture.
I loved the idea of being so taken with something that it becomes your number one feeling. It’s a holistic overtaking of the body, an infestation beyond mere thought. It is not necessarily ‘stimming’. For me, a ‘number one feeling’ is permission to let a passion run like wild ivy over the scaffolding of our bodies. To allow things to simmer, especially in a culture that seeks hot, new sensations every forty-eight hours. So often, we are encouraged to curtail or move past feelings, not allowing them to envelop us. That’s fine when they are destructive, but sometimes feelings can be productive. Let the inspo cook.
MNOF is a release of what has been simmering inside me before I offer it to you for a taste (can you tell I like cooking and baking?).
Why Now? Why Substack?
Because it is an outlet for the things I stifle and have been stifling for some time. I’ve learned to stifle for fear of being misunderstood in 280 characters or 60-second videos. I want to be heard and understood more than to be echoed online.
Because I prefer written words to videos as my creative output. Shoutout to the video-makers. I tried that life and did not like what it was doing to my brain. Writing is my most intimate medium.
Because I feel increasingly alienated from my fellow humans—online )more) and in the physical (less) realm. I need a place to discuss this disconnection, hoping it connects with some of you in the void.
Because I feel a lot of rage, and it’s getting worse. When harnessed, anger can be transformative, and maybe MNOF can help me sift and redirect that productive energy in ways that radiate beyond me.
Because I am an anthropologist first and a sociologist reluctantly. I have thoughtful critiques that don’t rise to the level of peer-review journal standards but are worth writing about for the good of the public and for my sanity. Some of these outlets require too much compromising of my authentic voice.
Because I want to publicly write about sex, love, and relationships in ways that are vulnerable.
Because there are a million topical pop culture and news/politics newsletters. This will not be one of them.
Because when I wasn’t grown, I had the benefit of seeking out older women to help assuage my anxieties about what it means to be an adult woman. They helped me tremendously. I want to pay the wisdom, lessons and mistakes forward. Hopefully, some youngins who need it will come across it.
Because the older women of my youth were correct bout what starts to happen to women in their 40s, and I want to talk about it—the good, the bad, the magical. None of it is ugly to me. Not yet.
Because I have spent 10 years writing (romantic fan) fiction under a nom de plume, and I’m tired of feeling ‘less than’ for it. Tired of allowing a single standard to define ‘quality’ and ‘worthiness’. Tired of separating that part of me and relegating it to the shadows because of fear. Expect some of that revised work to show up here.
Because I’m embracing my crotchety era. We can simply disagree.
Because my contribution to this place is how I will survive and grow from the things I cannot change in the next four years. May we all live to see the back of these next four years and the mourning within them.
Because I am not a machine, I’m a human being. Because I need to create and feel purposeful. Creating is a core part of my humanity. We’re living in a world where we are being scammed into thinking A.I. is going to enhance our lives rather than blunt our humanity. My way of fighting against that is to excavate the depths of my messy being-ness.
So…Is this a Diary?
Hell no.
That said, here’s a short list of categories and topics you can expect this newsletter to address:
• Any topic which has consumed my every thought to the point of being an embodied feeling that I must write to release the energy (food, books, media, etc.)
• Aunty diaries—the memories and lessons from my first three decades
• Reflections on changes I’ve observed in culture/society that concern me
• Short fiction—mostly romance and erotica, but occasionally other topics
• Non-fiction—from the personal to the professional
• ‘That’s that shit I don’t like’ chronicles or ‘what gets on my tits’