The Practice of A Particular Weird

And a space to connect over particular weirdness

They call it “rebranding” when you change your image, but what if you never really had a “brand” to begin with, and the whole idea of one is starting to feel like a too-tight jacket?

My mentor regularly asks me, “What is the unique value you bring to the table?” He's asking the right question, but I've always got the wrong answer: I have no idea.

Though, maybe there’s more justice in that answer than I’ve believed up until now.

When I first named this thing Bad Ideas For Saving the World, it was a riff on a joke I used to tell my students about what they were doing studying the humanities. This newsletter was intended as a way to stay in touch and continue some old conversations. And while I'm happy to say several relationships have survived, the community aspect never quite materialized. (Maybe that’ll change with the advent of Chat and Notes, but even if they’re Good, Actually, I’m not going to command my earliest readers away from busy lives and to one more social reel. I’ll ask nicely, though; see below.)

So anyway, I was left with a name, and a style I was cultivating that I wasn't really sure what to do with. I'd leave the thing alone for months at a time, try again, feel lost again, etc. I believed the problem was my inability to name my value. I didn't know that my “brand” was. And I think my last few posts—of which I hope this will be the last—have been attempts to articulate and ultimately write myself away from this problem.

It’s not exactly clear, after all, which parts of me are marketable and which might get me in trouble. I am, for instance, a deeply religious person: a Christian—but with my crossbeams askew. I meditate on the Tarot. My next nearest spiritual influences are Taoist, and I believe them (and more) to be reconcilable with my religion. I guiltlessly love postmodern philosophy and my favorite literary genres are modernist poetry and fantasy novels. I aspire to be a fantasy novelist myself one day, or to at least make a living writing for tabletop roleplaying games, of which I play many.

Yes, that is my Plan B after a career in academe failed to materialize. What can I say, I've a propensity for moonshots.

An imbrication of (only a few) influences

All my ambitions seem to require branding of some kind, and I’ve got a lot of weirdness to plumb for it. Yet none of it feels like it really goes together. Every time I try to answer the “branding” question for myself, something ends up on the cutting room floor. As a result, I can never quite show up to the blank page as a whole self. I know I'm not the only creative who feels this, or how it leaves you kind of withered after a while.

Which is why I consider it a godsend that I discovered

Matt Bell

’s amazing essay on the lessons he's learned as a writer, and this point especially:

One reason to write is to get as close as you can to your own truths, to think your own thoughts, to feel your own feelings. The culture at large is invested in homogenization of want: if we all want the same things, it's so easy to sell those things to us. Writing toward your own particular, your own weird, is a way of standing free—and, paradoxically, the more individual and specific the work is to you, the more other readers will find of themselves in your words.

I cannot overstate the massiveness of this click for me. The permission it’s given me to think my own piedness as an asset rather than a liability. To recognize that I’ve been too quickly trying to cut myself down to size, when I should be reveling in the connections and collisions unique to me that can’t be formed anywhere else. To play patiently, and see what greater Gestalt emerges from those experiments.

So I’m re-christening the blog here after my inspiration. Welcome to A Particular Weird. Mine, to be exact. The watchwords here will be:

• particular. a. having an individual, as contrasted with a universal, quality. Like Bell says, this is about getting as close as I can to myself and the analogies that closeness produces between me and everything else.

• weird. n. [arch]. fortune, destiny, or wisdom. This also has unmissable connotations of the strange and the supernatural, which is super appropriate for me and I deserve to lean harder into that—and see what true things come out of it.

• And, finally, practice. n. the regular exercise of a skill in order to develop or maintain proficiency. One doesn’t live into their own particular weird overnight. There’s only a little nuance between screaming into the void and undertaking some deliberate but solitary vocal lessons. Yet all of it, however inchoate and anonymous, serves that form and value for which I might be known one day.

So yeah! Welcome aboard. And thank you, again, for being here.

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So about that community thing.

Starting now, Particular Weird will also have a subscriber chat, and I invite interaction on the new Notes function, too. I’ll post short prompts, thoughts, questions and updates, and you can add your particular weirdness to the discussion.

To join the chat or use Notes, you’ll need to download the Substack app (for either iOS and Android). Chats and Notes are sent via the app, not email, so turn on push notifications if you want to stay updated on the conversation.

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How to get started

1. Download the app by clicking this link or the button below. Substack Chat is available on both iOS and Android.

2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

3. That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.