The Cats Are Psychos

Jul 16, 2024

I sit, I think, I write. I drink the coffee. I smell the flowers. I almost step into decapitated birds. You’ll find out why.

I haven’t consistently published here on Substack over the last few weeks. Haven’t kept my promise of posting on a specific day. Haven’t followed my schedule. It makes my people-pleaser part ashamed.

I’m worried my paid subscribers will get mad at me for not following through, for not delivering what I promised. Even though, rationally, I know nobody is laying awake in bed at night, upset that I didn’t hit ‘publish.’ I fully know it’s ridiculous.

Then I think about the paid subscriptions I hold and how that never even crosses my mind. I support other writers, because I believe in their work, because their words fit perfectly into the empty spaces inside of me, because I want them to know I value their labor.

Because I want them to be supported through exactly the phase I’m going through right now. When the living takes up so much space and energy that most of my writing is journaling, is processing, is writing stuff I cannot publish and will not for a very long time.

Processing delays are real.

Right now, I’m writing into the wound and through the wound and around the wound and hopefully out of the wound at some point. Sharing or publishing has to come from the scar as Nadia Bolz-Weber says. I don’t want people to read my words and feel like they’re driving by a car accident, unable to look away. I want to be honest, without being salacious. I want to say the truth without making people feel emotionally held hostage. I want to share from the scar, not the wound. Then I get impatient that the bloody thing still hasn’t even scabbed over.

My sister’s birthday present to me was a beautiful purple and green journal. Because of course.

My journals are full of my illegible, loopy cursive, laying bare my life and internal world. My Substack drafts are full of ideas that only make 60% sense, fragments of stories that could mean something but I don’t know what, essays that don’t have a point.

And, of course, they are, because they also reflect my inner world right now. I’m flailing. Grasping for clarity. Rooting around in the dark. Everything feels absurd.

Yesterday, a friend said “I’m in the middle of a shitstorm. But I’m going to listen to some music with friends right now.” And I thought, yes, shitstorms and music. Crying and lunch. The satisfaction I get from scrubbing and powerwashing my car, the purple soap that smells like cherry coke and the last rinse that includes a (probably cancer-causing) chemical that keeps hard water spots from forming and then immediately feeling bad because I have just used a gazillion gallons of drinking water to wash a stupid car.

I watch my neighbor’s orange cat, Leo, stalk voles and birds in my backyard. He’s so cute, until he turns into a total psycho, torturing another animal to death for the better part of an hour. He sometimes lets me scratch his ears in between murders. When you get to the point of feeling extreme guilt over washing your car right before calling cats murderers, that’s when you know your perspective is probably too skewed to share with the world.

When I have this feeling of nothing makes sense, everyone is crazy, the cats are psychos, this life is totally absurd, I know I definitely need to write and I definitely need to keep it to myself. Most of my words aren’t for public consumption right now.

I’m trying to be okay with that.

And because life is hilarious, I’m teaching a class about writing and publishing personal essays on Wednesday. In two days, I’ll share how I do the thing I can’t do right now.

Super. I mean, come on. What are the odds of this timing?

But then, again, I’ve been trying to create the community I crave, which has space for all the parts of writing and creating and being human. And I guess, I should, like, model that or whatever.

Ugh.

It's happening in two days:

Unputdownable—How to Write And Pitch Personal Essays That Don't Suck with my favorite editor of all time, the incomparable, brilliant, and kind Noah Michelson, Head of HuffPost Personal. You think I'm exaggerating. I'm not. He's the treatiest fucking treat you'll ever meet :)

The class is $47 BUT if you’re a paid subscriber, you get a discount code for $20 off.

If it's cost-prohibitive, I got you. Email me at juliane@bergmannconsulting.com for a free ticket. Do not feel bad about it. I have been at the receiving end of so much kindness and mentoring from creative friends that I'm happy to be in a position to give something to the community. It will bring me immense joy to see your lovely face in a Zoom square.