(The audio version is here.)
How many times have I started over, be it a blog (I just deleted a Wordpress blog because Substack is the newest writerly thing), a job (I was just fired from a gig and, due to the NDA embedded in it, I can’t say more about it. However, thanks to some homies, I negotiated some severance pay that allowed me to pay off some lingering debts and catch up—if not get a little ahead—on my rent), or a place (I currently live in Detroit, MI, after living in ::inhale:: Toledo (OH), Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Philadelphia ::exhale::). Call me the Queen of Starting Over. I’ve done it so often that, regarding my city-hopping, one friend said that it’s “not off-brand.”
I fight between “settling down and finding a good job”—especially in my middle age, where having steady income and benefits would be a damn great thing—and my creativity, which doesn’t always guarantee that between the constellation of romantic myths of The Starving Artist and Out Here Hustling. And, truth be told, I’m a prickly bitch, not one to allow people to come at me any kind of way for the sake of paycheck.
In the midst of all of this, my muse has been my constant companion. She—my muse is a woman who’s a baldie like me but smartly dressed in a wide-brimmed black hat with a matching chiffon veil and a black tailored suit jacket and pencil skirt; your muse may vary—has led me, with her black velvet gloved hand holding mine, to learn about interior design, photography, knitting, and even homebuilding. In her other hand is my standby of writing.
Perhaps all this moving around prepared me for this particular point in late-stage capitalism where the brave new world of gigging is the new labor model—I mean, even CEOs are now temp workers. I, too, should use the stamina I’ve developed over time to be out here snatching my writing from my muse’s other hand and be out here freelancing my ass off, right?
Not necessarily.
Not that I don’t love writing—and I’ve gotten garnered bylines in more increasingly prestigious media outlets, such as what called in the writing industry the “legacy” publications like Vogue and Newsweek—but it’s the constant hustling of it that tires my soul. The idea generation, the pitching, the waiting, the excruciating waiting to know if the editor accepted the pitch…yeah, no. I feel my innards adding another five years toward my death date.
So, what does a prickly middle-aged bitch who loves to write but also dabble in photography, interior design, and other muse-led art do?
Nowadays, this.
A substack.
This—rather my—substack will be writing-heavy, yes. But I’m also hoping to incorporate my other meanderings, such as my photography and my interior design. And the vibe I’m going for is indeed “fun/cky femme,” which I define as “fun, functional, funky, and femme.” More specifically, I define it—and myself—as “a queer woman who loves unexpectedly pleasant fun, needs things to be functional, and adores a funky, feminine aesthetic.”
And, this, being Substack, means that you have the choice of getting some free content in your inbox, but, if you want the full Fun/cky Femme experience—meaning more content that ranges from the full posts and the archives to interviews—that’ll be $7/month. Hey, a fun/cky femme still gotta eat, be housed and clothed, and pay her bills, such as the electricity and the internet that’s the vector for this content, right?
And, since I’m talking about money—the spectre shrouding the late-capitalist room that, if spoken, breaks the spell cast by the aforementioned myths of the Starving Artist and Out Here Hustling, even though some people will forever consider me gauche for even speaking about it—my initial goal is to have a steady subscriber community of 200 people by year’s end. From there, I’d love to build on it!
So, with all that stated upfront…let’s get fun/cky!