Sometimes, I hate Substack

and social media, and the internet, and Netflix, and books, and the world. Ok, not books.

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There was this time, remember this time? When you had the sense that you could complete things. I remember when Facebook came out and you’d read through your newsfeed, get everyone’s updates, and maybe click on a few photo albums. And then you’d get to the bottom. And you’d even get a little message saying ‘you’re all caught up’. Oh, man I miss those days.

I had that feeling with Substack today. There is so much amazing writing on here, people with such brilliant information and stories and experiences. And I want to read it all. And then there’s all the brilliant stuff people share on Instagram, and Facebook. And podcasts, and new books out and then there’s just the entire bloody Internet.

A friend once told me I’m a ‘completist’ after I told her I’d suffered through 8 seasons of Dexter even though it meant I didn’t sleep properly for months afterward because I kept waiting to be murdered but I needed to know how it ended. I am a book finisher. I stayed up into the small hours night after night to finish Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas when I should have been revising for my finals. The Sims was deathly for my real life because when you completed a life path you could just start again.

I know that as I got older, the world would have got bigger anyway. I loved feeling satisfied that I’d read everything I was meant to read for a research topic, but I knew for example that I had to choose something niche because I would find it too difficult to not read every single paper on a topic.

And now, it’s impossible. I just can’t complete…. this…all this.

I’m curious about the psychology of this (of course). It’s a bit obsessive isn’t it, a tad black and white. To have the lovely fantasy that one day maybe you could know all the information in the world, do all the things. Complete… life. Know that you had experienced the experiences. I guess it’s a way of making the world feel orderly, to imagine that it even could be completed. With any sense of satisfaction.

But knowing that doesn’t take away from the niggle that I have that I now have access to more information than I could ever hope to learn. It’s meant I end up dipping into things and not diving right into anything for a while, because I know I can’t come close to even scratching the surface.

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

I think the antidote is to try and just enjoy the not-knowing. To appreciate the absolute magic that the world is so huge and there is so much within it, and within us. To stand back and marvel instead of trying to grab it all and gather it all up. That makes me feel so lucky, that we all have such access to so much.

I’m still annoyed that I can’t complete Substack, though.