what do we do with it all?

🌧 click here to listen to my playlist that’s on repeat right now ‘rich bitch’

hi friend,

i’ve noticed my subscriptions increasing since there are a bunch of lovely people who actively post on substack that have recommended me (lacey and the ritual room being a big one right now).

like many people, i feel called to create a more curated, close community of like-minded individuals and kill the noise of the truly random people that the social media overlords share my content with.

but i don’t really know how to show up here consistently yet.

i thought i would start today by just sharing a little bit about my journey to start this substack and my current state of confusion with life.

the birth of pitter patter

i started pitter patter in july 2021, mainly because of loneliness.

i had left my job in tech as a product manager in december 2020, and with that, my main social circle and most of the people i interacted with daily left my life.

the beauty of that time period was that i was making more money than i could have ever dreamed of from my poetry books doing really well on tiktok.

i was financially so blessed but physically so alone.

so, as anyone does when they have a lot of money but no one to talk to, i turned to therapy.

pitter patter started off as a way to share my life–what i was learning in therapy, what i was learning about astrology, my fave playlists at the moment.

really anything that i wanted to get into in a more in-depth way that didn’t feel like it fit on my other social channels.

that continued honestly, looking back, until i got into my first long-term relationship.

the death of pitter patter

ok maybe death is dramatic but–

thinking about it now, jess (my partner) has been getting a lot of my essays in verbal format, and i’ve forgotten to share them with you.

as this is my first long-term relationship in adulthood, naturally, it has taken a bit of time for me to find equilibrium with myself and who i am within partnership.

if you’ve read there is room for all of you here or please look into the mirror you really know what i mean, but if you haven’t–

i have a little bit of a tendency to put other people first.

i was raised by boomers who were raised by veterans. very authoritarian, very eggshells, very ‘serve thy parents.’

did my opinion matter? no.

did what i wanted matter? most of the time, no (unless i made a really big fuss).

anyone who’s been in the ‘you repeat the pattern until you learn the lesson’ space knows that you can very easily repeat the patterns of your upbringing with partners until you’re blessed with some combo of luck and self-awareness.

so that was a big theme of 2023 and 2024 for me.

learning the lessons.

realizing that my partner is not my parents (and does not wish to be) and that i don’t need to put their needs before my own.

it has been hard to know what to share about what i’ve learned in my relationship and what to keep just ours.

you know me, i love to share. but i also respect my partner’s right to privacy.

i think too, in the beginning of a relationship, learning the lessons and processing everything can be enough. outside of what i’ve shared in my books, i haven’t 100% known how to parse out myself and what’s mine to share from what should be private. maybe that’s because there’s no perfect process there.

the death of my… career?

also dramatic but–

part of what made me so successful from 2021 to 2023 was my ability to be really strict with the way i promoted my books. i took almost no breaks. i posted every day. the algorithms loved me.

it’s no coincidence that when i started receiving love and validation regularly from another person (my partner), appeasing the algorithm became less and less appealing to me.

and thus, i sold less books.

my income has steadily decreased since 2021 but i have been blessed in so many other ways.

i have a new understanding and grace for myself. i figured out i have AuDHD, i started taking medication daily for it. i started paying more attention to my cycle and PMDD symptoms and, instead of forcing productivity all the time, tried rest without guilt (the operative word being ‘tried). i reconnected with my mom. i found love!

now i am in the fun place where the world is burning (literally WTF y’all), i don’t know if i can support myself with my book sales much longer (i went from selling thousands of books a month to a few hundred just to be super transparent), but i also don’t feel like this is the end for me.

i don’t want my net worth or my self-worth to be tied to algorithms. i don’t want to be a machine. i want self-discipline that comes from a loving space. i want to create and share to connect with people, not because i’m afraid of not being able to pay my mortgage.

moving forward

i really like writing like this. it’s good for my brain. i like letting people in! you’re not alone! we are the same!

i like writing ADHD essays that are not very well organized and sharing my thoughts on things.

i think i would personally be in a better place if more people shared lessons from their relationships and spoke more honestly about the difficulty of being in a long-term relationship when you have heavy childhood wounding.

so… if it’s okay with you, i think i’m going to do more of that!

i haven’t been posting on instagram much but this is mainly my brain space there:

michaelapoetry

A post shared by @michaelapoetry

ok xoxo i’m ready for this new era.

i know it’s intimidating to engage with things and maybe i feel like an amorphous blob to you but i would love email replies, comments, DMs, i would love to chit chat about how you’re doing with the leopards eating your face (reference).

m