Things I Said in Substack Notes This Week and Have More To Say About

A weekly column for connecting further and deeper on topics I care about because the conversations here are just so rich and wonderful

This is my weekly free column rounding up things I shared on Notes (and every now and then something poignant in the comments I shared on someone else’s great writing.) I elaborate a little on them, especially trying to emphasize the relationship between art and mental health, which is my specific writing and research niche. (And I believe that all of us are artists and all face mental health challenges to varying degrees.) I hope it also introduces you to writers that you want to get to know better.

This week’s images free on Unsplash using search term “talking coffee” because I want to imagine that we’re all sitting here in Notes with our coffee and tea and wine and water and have in-depth conversations, albeit asynchronous ones.

A FRAMEWORK TO BEGIN:

Joyce Wycoff

prompted me on last week’s Notes: “Riches overflow! Would love to know more about your process of note taking in order to feed it back to us with such organization and thought.” So I thought I’d share that with you …

Thanks for asking about this Joyce! So, I start each week fresh with a Google Doc that looks like this:

I approach actually writing and responding to Notes in a totally organic manner. There are a few things I share regularly (my own posts, my inspirations for the week) but mostly I just see what’s happening in the conversations and respond conversationally and restack what feels relevant and interesting to me.

Every day or two, I go back through my “activity” tab and reflect on what’s been happening and begin to use that to fill in the blanks on that spreadsheet. By doing that, I notice patterns and trends in what people are talking about, I get more ideas about things that I’m curious to ask more about, etc. Usually I add my own extra notes into the Google Doc at that time.

At the end of the week, I move all of that to a new post in Substack. I add all of the “@” mentions and links, see if there are any other comments or thoughts I want to add, add in some buttons and polls and then share with all of you.

I love it. It really allows me to engage deeply with these conversations in a way that for me probably wouldn’t happen otherwise just because of how my own brain and attention work.

I essentially do the same thing for my Wednesday and Friday roundups except that in those cases I’m sharing themed content (writing on Wednesdays and art/mental health on Fridays) … with the latter one, I don’t have any specific categories so that’s more just free flow sharing what’s interesting me throughout the week.

Questions welcome but hopefully that gives you some idea of how I approach curating these digests. I use the word curating very intentionally because I’m exploring a lot about what that means in my own work right now, going back to the root of the word “cura” related to curing, taking care of, giving attention to …

Thanks for the comments on this including from

Pamela Leavey

,

Donna McArthur

,

Creativity Thesaurus

,

Natalie Eslick

,

Lauren Sauder

as well as

Madelleine Müller

who said:

“This is brilliant and thank you for sharing @Kathryn Vercillo. I always think people keep all this stuff in their head and that I’m the odd one out who needs documents and tables and spreadsheets to keep things organised and remember everything. This makes me feel more normal.” 

A SPECIAL CONNECTION:

It started out with

Lindsay Johnstone

restacking a quote from one of my posts and saying:

“@Kathryn Vercillo saying it like it is. The work, whatever it looks like, is never done and it's freeing to remember that. Yes there will be deadlines, pinchpoints and times of stress that we can do little to avoid but we can choose to reframe how we approach it all, perhaps as a creative river flowing past us. 

We dip the thimble, the cup or the bucket in depending on our energies and needs and lift out what we can without the overthink… maybe!”

I responded that I really loved that thimble, cup, bucket imagery and said I might have to commission

Sue Clancy

to illustrate it. Within what seemed like moments, Sue shared:

Obviously, I loved it. And so did Lindsay, restacking it with a note:

“@Sue Clancy is a sketching genius! This in response to a chat I was having with @Kathryn Vercillo on how to reframe our feelings around overwhelm (work or otherwise). 

If creativity/work is a river (or, indeed, your @Substack inbox or Notesfeed is!) then we must accept it never stops flowing. We'll never ‘complete’ it. That can feel uncomfortable for chronic ‘finishers’ like me, but if I think more in terms like this beautiful drawing then I get to decide what size of vessel I can currently afford to dip into that river. 

Maybe today it's a thimble. Tomorrow, a bucket. Both are OK. And the power of the ‘save’ function here hasn't been lost on me. One way to create a more spacious experience when our inbox overfloweth!”

And of course we’re hardly the only ones to love it. Comments flowed in from others including

Mary Hutto Fruchter

,

Shinjini

, and

KateMotleyStories

. The conversation continued in various threads like here. I love that this spark and that spark and that spark ignited more of a flame around the topic.

DOG PICS:

Goatfury Writes

and I have been trading dog pics here. Come join us and share your pet! Here’s an old pic of my previous dog (the dark one with the pink harness, Katara, my soulmate dog) with a pack of other Korean dog meat industry rescue dogs a few years back. The two dogs I have now are also rescues from that industry but she was the first. Sadly, she passed away young at age 7 or 8 but all of the other dogs pictured here are still living their best new lives.

INSPIRATION:

In my continued quest to find new “scam tv” docs and dramas, I’ve been told (by which I mean a podcast I listen to mentioned it) that Glitch and Telemarketers are two new ones I may like so that’s what I’ll be watching this week. 

I forget everyone who was in this conversation before but I know

Betsy Streeter

Lauren Sauder

and @Ashton were a few.

So that’s what I’m watching 🦋🦋🦋

• I am reading: a ton of dense stuff for school and also Keep Going from

  Austin Kleon

• I am listening to: The Mayries and as an extension this playlist: spotify.link/XN6BRhIneDb

• I am smelling: cedar scented essential oil 

• I am tasting: green apple white vinegar on lots of stuff because it’s really yummy 

• I am feeling: sleepy but able to rest today 

What’s nourishing you today?

My weekly shares was one of the inspirations for

Jenn Zuko

’s Inspo piece this week. I delighted in reading her inspirations, and her reminder that the word comes from breathing in, and this frame for it all:

“Most of us here are writers, after all, so it is a good thing to peruse the museums of input that all of us are taking in regularly—it adds to my understanding and appreciation of a writer’s output, if I can see a bit of what they’re in-putting, too. It’s like a sort of non-academic literature review. Or a cabinet of curiosities tour.” 

I ANSWERED:

Keeley Rees

posted this fun note that is so fun to check out all of the comments on:

“Anyone else feel like words have a texture or a weight? Or am I tripping? Like the good ones hold in the air lightly & the gross ones crunch? Someone know what I’m talking about, seriously? 🙈 

If you’re still here & I’m not crazy, what’s your fave word?”

I responded:

I wonder if this is a kind of synesthesia?

My dad and I kept a running lair of ugly words. And would also always share fun vocabulary words that we had newly discovered. He loved telling everyone he was elozable.

I like a lot of c and s words. Concupiscence.

There’s a sexy silly scene in the movie Threesome that uses this word and makes me laugh.

Just a few other great ones that I responded to included this from

Carmen Luisa

of Rooted in Rituals:

The German newspaper Die Zeit (The Time) one of the most important and high standard newspapers in the country have a column on peoples favourite words every week. I don’t read the news but this section was my favourite when I did during my studies. And German words can be loooong, and funny 😆

To which Keeley said: “I have 3 fave German words: schmetterling, hubschrauber & radiergummi.” And I added: “The way German combines ideas into single words is so great.” Schadenfreude immediately comes to mind of course. And I remember when I first started grad school for psychology reading a book, the name of which now escapes me, that really dug into the German words that were used in Freud’s original writing and how the English translations could have been presented differently.

Patricia Meier

of My Weird and Wonderful Life said:

“You are not crazy. Words can cut, words can heal. Sound can create and sound can destroy. We “hear” words in our mind, feel them with our etheric body was we read, write or hear them… You are not crazy, you are aware.”

Pamela Leavey

offered the word discombobulate which for some reason made me think of a lot of words I like from crime tv shows. Defenestration. Exsanguinate. Enucleation. Beautiful words for terrible acts.

Teri Adams

of Reality check said, “Defenestration! I just heard that one recently on a British police procedural. It’s a favorite, but you don’t hear it often. And, hard to work into most conversations.”

And

Victoria SkyDancer

of The Navigatrix offered spanikopita which immediately made me want both that and saganaki.

NOTES ON NOTES:

If you use the Substack app then you’ve probably noticed that it updated and you may or may not have opinions on that. Lots and lots of people are chatting about it in Notes. Basically where I stand is that I really don’t like updates in general so I always have trouble adjusting to them but also I don’t feel like I can control what’s going to happen on big platforms, so I try not to worry about it too much. That said, my initial reaction is a dislike for the visual clutter of the new format and a strong desire for all platforms to offer more customization so we can toggle on and off the various features we do and don’t like and have a much more personalized experience.

One conversation I appreciated about this was from

Claire Venus

who was responding to a note by

Sarah Shotts

of Kindle University and said:

I’d like to encourage MORE conversation with @Substack with those of us who are neurodivergent and / or HSP before even MORE visual noise is rolled out and we have to leave …  💨 

Team  @Substack Writers - do you have anyone neurodivergent on your team?! Or in your beta testing product lab? Our nervous systems are fried as creators and these types of changes don’t help us do our best work here. 

Can we have the option to turn notes off? 

Would love to see more neurodivergence represented in these articles you write. Please tag other writers…

So for me personally, I don’t want to turn Notes off. I love Notes and spend a lot of time there. However, I want other people to have that option. I have long wanted the option to toggle on and off my activity messages - so that I could see just restacks or just mentions or whatnot. I would love to be able to turn off the new visual noise in the app and just go to the inbox when I’m ready. This is the kind of customization I’m talking about. I want my version of the app and someone else’s version of the app to look entirely different based on the choices we make about what we do and don’t want to see.

Diane K24

was among those who agreed with me: “Bingo, Kathryn! Toggling on or off features that frustrate or distract us from reading—Great idea!”

Here’s a more complete look at what I said. And I have to give a shoutout of thanks to

Jasmine @ Substack

who responded thoughtfully to what I shared. I learned from her that Substack is a smaller team right now than I even knew, with only one iOS app developer right now, so they’re actually doing really amazing considering that and it helps to have that behind the scenes info in terms of reminding us to give grace to changes!

I RESTACKED:

A couple of you told me that you collect:

• Jo: art reference photos, fabric and yarn

• Ashton: postcards from travels

That reminded me that I always buy myself an inexpensive necklace when I travel, so I suppose that’s a collection although I hadn’t thought of it before. I also used to always buy mugs from travels but I have too many these days and have stopped. Some are not favorites though or are associated with trips with less good memories so I might thin the herd then begin buying again. 

What do you collect?

I also restacked:

That one sparked some great comments and conversation like this from

Pamela Leavey

that probably resonates for a lot of people:

“I struggle with loneliness so I can relate to the two posts that

@Kathryn Vercillo shared by

Lonely Robot Theme

and

david roberts

. I live alone and have for years. The pandemic definitely increased my feelings of isolation and loneliness. I think that is also the case with many people who spent a lot more time alone during the pandemic. I share a myriad of other reasons for my loneliness, but I’ll save that for another time.”

The pandemic didn’t have quite that for me as I explained in my response:

“I also live alone and have for pretty much my entire adult life. I have a great partner right now and we’re planning to move in together but I’m nervous about the hard parts of that after so much time living on my own. Also excited about the good parts of it.

We actually were lucky with our timing - we met a few months before the pandemic so we were in super honeymoon stage when it hit which meant that we were content to just be alone together. I know that was not true for most people who might have been entirely alone or might have felt alone crowded into the house with their families 24/7. I feel very lucky. Not that the pandemic wasn’t hard in its ways for me but I know that the loneliness part didn’t get me as much as a result of that.”

However, upon thinking about it more, I realize that there was an element of some of the hardest loneliness of my life. My siblings and I were not on the same page about COVID. They’re my best friends, I adore them, and this was the first time that we were really just not okay with each other. It blew up in some ugliness and I felt very alone for a little bit because of that chasm.

That one was a big hit all across Notes with lots of shares and comments. Many people simply liked it but there were a few bigger debates.

Marple

said:

“Not sure why everyone is so down on the visual and the dopamine hit. It’s not that bad…colour is wonderful…underrated…photography is fantastic. Not everyone is a puritan.”

My response: I’m not sure which aspect you’re referencing here but my own experience of it would have been Instagram. I really loved Instagram for a long time, for exactly that reason. I still browse through the cute photos of the dogs I follow from my own dogs’ account for that dopamine hit.

But over time, it became messy for me - too many reels and sounds and ads. And the visuals are sometimes stunning but just seemed to get really repetitive. I’ve also always been much more of a word person so I really like a word-heavy platform that also allows for images. But that’s just me.

Judith Lindbergh

of On Writing, Creativity, History said:

“This illustration says it all… and yet we are here. Anyone care to share something positive about social media?”

I answered:

“I think the good part shows up in the Substack notes Island. But I think you can find that on any social media if it’s the right fit for you at the right time. What I love here is the community, the emphasis on words over images although images can be included, the generally positive and thought provoking conversations. I’ve made great friendships via other forms of social media over the years but ultimately each platform came to be more draining than nourishing. This one probably has a life cycle too but for now it fits me.”

I think all of these do have life cycles and that was reiterated by

A. I. Knitting

who said of the original drawing:

“I remember the early ones like this, with MySpace and Blogspot on them. Facebook was tiny!”

THEN,

M. E. Rothwell

went on to create a terrific Substack specific land map, namings lots of different people in areas like the Oases of Curiosities (where I spend a lot of time), the Savannah of Photography, the River of Literature, and Notes City (where I clearly also spend a lot of time.) I think I travel amongst a few of these but really want to be a bridge between the islands of art/creativity and mental health/wellness.

I WAS RESTACKED:

Winston

restacked my interview with

Rae Katz

, saying:

“This interview with Kathryn Vercillo provides a deeply personal and insightful exploration of her journey with chronic illness, depression, and the role of creativity, specifically crochet, in her healing process. I would like to say to Kathryn to thank her for sharing her candid and heartfelt journey with us. Her story resonates with so many who have faced similar challenges. And to Rae, thank you for showcasing such stories. It not only offers support but also helps change the narrative for people living with illness.”

So did

Becky Handley

, and I’m really glad this conversation is continuing:

THAT POST:

I can't work nine to five every day and be an okay person

Wendy Pratt

restacked one of my What’s True For Me Today posts, saying:

“I love the community in this thread; the small windows into the lives of others, the simplicity of the form. Good stuff.”

I really appreciated that one because numbers-wise those posts tend to get the least opens. I share a lot of different types of writing here and I post really often so I’ve made it easy for people to unsubscribe to posts they don’t want and absolutely don’t expect everyone to read everything. But it’s nice to get the feedback that something is resonating. I try to share my authentic true self as much as I can.

Wendi Gordon

restacked my post about my own depression experience:

Leon Macfayden

of Policing Mental Health also shared my recent post on depression, highlighting the images I shared: “One of the most powerful parts of this poignant and insightful article is the photos. They all show a happy, beaming face and you would never know that Kathryn was going through depression at that time. A smile can hide a lot.” To which I added: “This point is appreciated. I shared photos of myself over the past fifteen or so years in this post. I was not “lying” in any of the photos. Occasionally I was “faking it.” But more often than not, I was desperately working to experience the pleasure/joy/connection in that tiny moment despite being shrouded in the haze of depression most of the time. For me, depression almost never looked like sobbing … it really looked like numb but trying. I think if you know me you can see in some of the photos that the smile doesn’t quite make it to my eyes. The point here, as Leon has indicated, is that you can’t tell depression by looking at someone.”

Leon also shared my Create Me Free Substack Support Pod in a post with some lovely words: “It will help get more eyes on your work. My interview with her is my most popular article ever, and she’s a great person, so please consider subscribing.”

I ALSO WANT TO THANK:

• Nathalie Peña
  of Creating Spirals for mentioning me in Slow Saturday Thoughts and hopefully Nathalie doesn’t even see this because she’s traveling right now and I wish for her that she’s immersed in travel joys and adventures.

• Steve Henneberry
  for mentioning me in a recent update sharing that he’s gone paid on Substack and sending love to the folks he pays to subscribe to.

• Priya Iyer
  for sharing love in a note and naming me with some other great writers: I’ve been on @Substack for about 6-7 months now, and am finally getting settled and growing steadily. I’m writing more, and I think my writing is getting better. I’m excited for all the new changes even as I’m a little anxious about keeping up with them. All this to say, hello, and thank you to some amazing fellow Substackers for inspiration and support.

• Lindsay Johnstone
  for tagging me in a note about repetition related to an article by Samantha Clark as that’s a theme I’ve been exploring lately in various ways and then Samantha Clark for resharing that.

• Lucy Werner
  for sharing the roundup of my virtual book tour and telling people to keep an eye out for my post about how it all worked

• perfectlight
  for tagging me to check out an image depicting The Overthinker’s Alphabet.

• Shinjini
  for the mention of my curated lists as potentially supportive of a Substack scenius.

• Mary Hutto Fruchter
  who called me Substack sunshine which is one of my favorite compliments ever. 

Thank you for supporting my work with a Create Me Free subscription.

Our expenses reflect our values and priorities, and it would mean a lot to know that you value my research and writing about the complex relationship between art and mental health.

This support means more than I can ever express.