Navel Gazing: a Newsletter and Community
And a place for nonfiction and creativity outside of the algorithm
Hello and welcome to NAVEL GAZING! This post in an introduction to this newsletter.
Navel Gazing is a space outside of social media and the consumption/marketing apparatus. It’s a site of learning, support, and discussion, with a focus on literature, art, and innovative ideas.
It’s a supportive community for writers, artists, and thinkers who want to be engaged and inspired.
All of the writing in this newsletter is untouched by artificial intelligence and oriented towards learning and fostering community.
As a writer and teacher, I write essays and offer community classes for nonfiction writing— particularly essays, “weird” nonfiction, and genre-diverse writing (think poetic prose and playing with form). I write about literature, books, essays, social media, neurodivergence, LGBTQIA+, drug and eating disorder recovery, and film.
Navel Gazing is an alternative to social media.
I know that social media is beloved by many people, but I’ve learned that it can inhibit my creativity if I am not conscious of how it affects me. Social media platforms and their accompanying algorithms favor sensationalism and rate “content” on a mysterious hierarchical scale. A lot of my writing explores the ambivalence many of us feel regarding social media.
I am interested in writing from one’s inner compass, rather than writing to win over an algorithm. I believe in this.
The algorithm existed long before social media. Gatekeepers were once the algorithm, wrapping their welcoming arms around writers and artists who were both mimetic and innovative, but not too innovative. Here I think of Zora Neale Hurston, who experienced much literary success because of her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. But she wrote many other books; books rooted in cultures too foreign for her zeitgeist, like Tell My Horse and Barracoon. These book were less well known and well received, but masterpieces in their own right. Hurston’s perspective strayed from her peers in the Harlem Renaissance, because she had grown up in Eatonville, Florida, a town whose authorities were predominantly Black. Because of this, and her privileged position as the mayor’s daughter, she was sheltered from the white gaze for much of her childhood. This gave her a unique perspective that wasn’t always welcomed in the literary establishment. She refused to cater to white patrons, and died penniless.
Alice Walker found Hurston’s unmarked grave in the 1970s (she wrote about it in this essay). Thus began Hurston’s revival.
Who would Hurston have been, had she catered to the white gaze? It doesn’t matter. She refused.
This is something that haunts me as a writer, and as an outsider. My transient childhood gifted me with a keen eye for observation. I am a late diagnosed autistic— as a young person I roved the fringes of social circles and behaved in ways that others sometimes ridiculed, ways that led me to danger. I did not have a stable home or a strong sense of belonging; not even in my own family. In her book Create Dangerously, Edwidge Danticat writes of the “floating homeland” of the diaspora. Although I live in the country of my birth, I relate to this concept in my own way. I’ve no physical home that feels like my own, nor do I have family connections. This is its own gift. I think it’s one of the many reasons I’m particularly vulnerable to the addictive qualities of social media; the (empty) promise of community under the gaze of corporations who seek my data and attention and wish for me to live as a somnambulist, constantly forgetting myself and instead prioritizing the gaze of others.
How can I be what others want me to be?
An unanswerable question, but the question at the heart of social media and marketing one’s work. It used to be my primal question— one that I lived by without realizing it.This question can live inside our hearts, if we are willing to forget ourselves or if we never knew ourselves in the first place. But we can transform How can I be what others want me to be into Who am I, and who do I want to be?
My primary aim as a human is intertwined with my aims as a writer: I want the truth. I want to be ruthlessly honest with myself as a human and with my readers as a writer. I want to accept myself fully as I am in any moment while also working to unearth and expose the ways I’ve learned to survive, in order to find new ways to trust myself and the world. As a writer, this means trusting that my readers will find me, and join me on my journey. As a writer, this means that who I am on the page is no different than who I am in real life. Period. No performance. Only self-investigation. I do not aim my work towards consumption, simply because I cannot. I’m not capable of doing so.
For me, literature is a means of self-exploration. In reading widely I discover new worlds and perspectives. How others perceive themselves and are perceived, and the inevitable gap that exists between self-perception and cultural perception. I imagine the expansion of our worlds and selves. I gravitate towards writers who want something better for themselves and the world. I think there’s incredible power in voicing our experiences; whether we’re writers or not. When we fully understand and accept ourselves, we’re capable of creating new paradigms.
Navel Gazing is a place for folks to be inspired, find their innate gifts and unique perspectives, and take shelter from the storm of content that is increasingly altered by machines and manicured to cultivate a sense of FOMO or not-enoughness.
WHAT I OFFER:
During my teens I was often broke and homeless. I have experienced drug and alcohol addiction, and lived for decades with an eating disorder. This doesn’t undercut my authority as a teacher and scholar. I worked as a wildland firefighter for seven years and a nanny for nearly two decades. Minimum wage jobs and housing insecurity aren’t unfamiliar to me.
In my twenty-ninth year, my mom died by suicide. It was then that I decided to go back to college, knowing that life is ephemeral and I needed to pursue my dreams of writing. At thirty-two I began life as an elder undergraduate (haha) at Syracuse University. I worked thirty hours in addition to attending college full-time, and minored in film studies and Hindi.
After graduating summa cum laude, with honors, I was admitted to the MFA program at Syracuse, where I studied fiction and taught writing courses. There, I worked with writers like George Saunders, Dana Spiotta, Arthur Flowers, Jenny Offill, Jonathan Dee, and Eleanor Henderson. Now I’m a PhD candidate in nonfiction, teaching the craft of writing to undergraduates and studying the history of U.S. colonization and diasporic literature. Never in my life did I think I’d be a part of “the academy,” and I’m ambivalent about its structure and hierarchical systems. Neither of my parents graduated high-school. For my entire life until college I was sure of my intellectual deficiency. I am not a naturally theoretical thinker. I am creative. My ways of thinking are often marginalized in academic spaces.
I am queer. I am disabled. I am neurodivergent. I am nonbinary. I am an eccentric, and I love eccentrics. I am an outsider, but I also ask the question: outside of what?
I offer a personal perspective and a warm invitation to my subscribers: create your art on your own terms. Find your voice and cultivate it within yourself.
My essays are varied and nuanced and true to me.
As a subscriber, you’ll have access not only to my writing and the Navel Gazing community, but to classes, meetings, and courses that will help you grow as a writer and thinker.
I was once living below the poverty line, and although I am above it now, I still struggle financially. That’s why my pricing is tiered. If you are struggling financially and want to be a paying subscriber, I am always happy to comp you a free subscription, no questions asked (and no explanations needed).
Paying subscribers can access nearly four years of archives and comment on posts. Most of my content is free for a month before it goes behind the paywall. Some of it remains free forever (like this post!).
Membership tiers:
Monthly subscriptions are currently $6.95 per month, to reflect the quality of the newsletter. If this prices you out, let me know, and we can work something out.
Yearly subscriptions are $59 a year. This means that yearly subscriptions are much more economical than monthly, averaging out to $4.91 a month.
Founding Subscribers can choose to pay the designated $98 a year, or any amount above $59 a year. All founding subscribers open access to classes and discunts on class prices. This yearly cost for the highest tier averages out to $8.15 a month.
Why Have Paywalls?
My paywalls are in service of the value of my writing as well as safety and privacy for myself and my subscribers. My writing is deeply personal. My subscribers who comment often divulge personal information and interact openly and vulnerably. For these reasons, the paywall acts as a protective mechanism. I am always happy to comp memberships for those who cannot afford to pay for a subscription.
I hope you enjoy Navel Gazing, and I am so glad you are here.
wow!! Can't wait for more details on this; I hope I can join!!