First things first...

who am I and how did I get here (in your inbox)?

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Chapter One: Let’s Address the Elephant in the Inbox
Chapter Two: Was it a Glitch, or God?
Chapter Three: I Shattered My Phone Screen
Chapter Four: It’s Better to Have Sent the Email Later Than You Planned, Than Never to Have Sent the Email at All
Chapter Five: Looking Past the Cracks
Afterword: Pages From My Meme-oir
Acknowledgments

CHAPTER ONE: Let’s Address the Elephant in the Inbox

It’s me. Hi. I’m the elephant, it’s me.

I’m sitting here, drafting my first piece of writing on this new (to me) platform, and wondering if you, dear reader, are wondering how I found my way to your inbox. Maybe me being here in your inbox isn’t an elephant-sized issue in need of addressing. I could be exaggerating. Maybe I’m more like a bird in the airport: there’s probably an obvious explanation, but you still want to know how it happened.

It’s likely I’m just as perplexed as you are. I created my Substack account (maybe because I was having a midlife situation?) and then…I did nothing.

I didn’t write anything. I didn’t promote my Substack. No posts. No information on my about page (but now there is). No personalized welcome email for new subscribers. I found a few writers, subscribed to their publications, and then I put Substack on the shelf with all my other half-baked ideas.

But here you are on my list of subscribers. And here I am, in your inbox.

Riddle me that.

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CHAPTER TWO: Was it a Glitch, or God?
(or a feature on Substack I didn’t know about at the time?)

If I had to guess, I’d say you found me here one of three ways:

1. Via the comments section of other Substack subscriptions.
2. Because I told you I started a Substack and sent you a link.
3. Katie Blackburn

Do you know Katie? I’m sure most of you do, because she’s the reason a majority of you found me. She writes

let me tell you

, and she also has my little ol’ Substack listed as one of her recommended subscriptions.

In my eyes, that’s like having having Reese Witherspoon or Oprah slap their book club sticker on my front cover.

But before I realized it was Katie’s kindness that brought so many of you here, I had a moment of pure and utter confusion. I stood in my bathroom with my toothbrush hanging out of my mouth, staring blankly at my inbox, thinking Substack had glitched and was sending me too many subscriber notifications. But after opening a couple of emails and realizing all of them contained a different subscriber, I was back to being dumbfounded.

While I was thrilled to have so many people interested in my newsletter (which, I need to emphasize once again, still had nothing to view or read before subscribing), I couldn't figure out where this sudden wave of interest was coming from.

Then I looked up to my ceiling (but really, past the ceiling, into the heavenly realms), and raised my eyebrows.

“Lord, did you do this,” I asked.

Nahhh... I quickly dismissed the thought.
…But maybe?

I could see it in my mind's eye—a story of a writer's humble Substack beginnings and a God who is bigger than the algorithms. I prepared the Substack account, the Lord brought the subscribers. Of course, as much as I believe the Lord could totally pull that off, I had a feeling someone less omnipotent must have mentioned me and my account. (Thanks again, Katie.)

And now I know about Substack’s “recommendation feature.” So I’d like to take a moment to pay it forward and make a few recommendations of my own:

Raise & Shine Letter

|

wordy musings

|

Courageously Soft

|

SLANT LETTER

|

The Second Act

|

Big Sky to Big Apple

|

Home At Last

|

the gold standard.

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CHAPTER THREE: I Shattered My Phone Screen

I have owned an iPhone for at least as long as my oldest son has lived on this earth—so, nearly twelve years.

For those entire twelve years, I’ve dropped my phone more times than I can count, but it remained relatively scratch-free. Of course, there was that one time one of my babies kicked my brand new phone out of my hand with her spastic baby reflexes as I was taking a photo of her and the fancy sapphire crystal camera lens cracked—but we got it fixed and I only hold that incident against her on my bad parenting days.

However, a couple of weeks ago, I was retrieving a towel for my youngest child after he finished bathing and forgot I had set my phone on the stack of towels. My phone did a free fall from about five feet and fell flat, screen down, on the tile floor.

I retrieved it, assuming no damage had been done and slid it into my back pocket. After helping my son get his pajamas, I pulled my phone back out to check the time and that’s when I saw it—cracks upon cracks that branched off into even more cracks.

“Oh no…,” I said aloud, my voice trailing off as I stood in the middle of the living room staring at my shattered screen. I was legit shocked and appalled something like this could happen to a phone I dropped on a regular basis. (My husband, on the other hand, was probably more shocked this hadn’t happened sooner.)

There went my record.
Number of days since cracking phone screen: 4,380 0

Later, I messaged two of my friends in a group chat. “Well, it finally happened,” I typed, “for the first time in the history of me owning an iPhone, I shattered my screen.”

After a moment of being mutually bummed over the incident, a message popped up on the screen.

“You’ll see past the cracks after a little while and you won’t even notice them.”

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CHAPTER FOUR: It’s Better to Have Sent the Email Later Than You Planned, Than Never to Have Sent the Email at All

Truth be told, I wanted to send this email on the first of the month (ehem, in January), until I realized I wasn’t going to make that self-imposed deadline. Thanks to the New Year Enthusiasm™ still buzzing through my veins, I knew a small setback like this didn’t have to completely derail me. I gave myself a pep talk. There was always the first of February.

What’s so important about the email going out on the first of the month, you might be wondering.

Great question, I’d love to tell you (hashtag Elyse Myers). I already have a newsletter called “First Things First and Long Story Short.” Eventually, I will merge it with this Substack and keep things all in one place. Obviously, the long story short portion of my newsletter will transfer pretty seamlessly to tl;dr. The only difference is I will start with the short version of the story before launching into the longer version, instead of the other way around.

But what about my first things first segment? How could I continue doing that part here on Substack? I didn’t want to let it go, because I was secretly hoping every time you hear someone say, “first things first…,” you’ll think, “I wonder what Alicia will be writing about next?” I want to pull a Pavlov and create an association in your brain between an environmental stimulus and another stimulus which occurs naturally. Is that too much to ask?

Then, I had a light bulb moment. I would do a reoccurring, monthly segment called “First Things First” with all the quick little things I want to tell you and I would share it on the first of every month.

Brilliant plan, if I do say so myself.

(This is the part where you double-check today’s date. Spoiler alert: today is not the first of the month.)

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CHAPTER FIVE: Looking Past the Cracks

I debated whether or not I should sit on this email for another month so everything (this email, my Pavlov plan, this whole Substack I created months ago) could go ~*according to plan*~. But just like my shattered iPhone screen, it’s full of cracks.

Maybe this was a stupid idea.
What if no one even remembers why I’m showing up in their inbox?
Will people see the cracks sprawling across my plan like I do?
Do I even have a plan for this Substack?? WHAT IS THE PLAN, ALICIA?
I feel like I need to address the big, awkward elephant in the room—of how much time has passed between the time people subscribed and when they’re just now receiving my first email.
Or should I pretend like no time has passed?

Or maybe, I could…just start—cracks and all?

My friend ended up being right about my phone, by the way. A little time has passed and I hardly notice the cracks anymore—and maybe the same is true for the cracks in my writing strategy. I’m allowed to try something new without a fully formed plan. Maybe I could lean into the worries I have about what others might be thinking (because you’re probably not thinking those things) and use it to fuel my inspiration.

Maybe I can just introduce myself as the elephant in the inbox and go from there.

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AFTERWORD: Pages From My Meme-oir

I’m 100% stealing this idea from Gina Linetti via Brooklyn Nine-Nine. She talked about having a whole book of memes and calling it her Meme-oir, but I’m going to borrow the wording and use it as an excuse to share memes that might as well be talking about me.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

For a long time, I felt completely uninspired and bored with my writing. Then I joined a writing course offered by Exhale—my favorite writing community in all the land—called Charmed: Writing to Delight. The writing prompts and exercises were gold and I walked away with at least five ideas about what I wanted to write and how I wanted to write them. Even this email and the style in which I wrote it was loosely based off one of the exercises from the course. (I will likely use this writing style again in the future, so don’t be surprised.) I highly recommend the course whenever it’s offered again!

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