Substantively unserious

Just eat the dessert

If there's a single person who is the most surprised about the rise in popularity of this newsletter, it's me.

Several times a week, and sometimes multiple times a day, I get the "ding" on my phone that tells me I have a new subscriber. It's exhilarating.

With every new addition, I feel like we're growing a community of special people, maybe a little weird, but special nonetheless. (By the way, please recruit other new weird people to our growing crew!)

Every week I look forward to writing this - I love to tell the stories of what's happening here and what I'm learning about urban farming, goats, gardening, and how it extrapolates into "real life" at large. Sometimes there's a larger point, and sometimes I'm just trying to keep the children and the kids and the wallaby alive - it's a mixed bag.

This substack feels almost like a guilty pleasure to me. It's a fun reprieve - but maybe because I love it so much, it feels almost frivolous. Perhaps that's why I'm constantly surprised at its continued and growing success.

Just to prove my point I am littering this post with pictures of my duck for no other reason than she’s cute and funny when she’s muddy. She makes me smile.

It seems like a tenet of life that work is supposed to be arduous and unfun.

We live in a world of "work before play" or "eat your vegetables before you're allowed to have the yummy stuff."

I recently talked to a girlfriend about this newsletter, the work I'm doing now, and my plans for future projects. I was trying to unpack with her why I feel almost guilty about how much I love it and how well it's going.

By the way, I realize how ridiculous it is to write a "Woah is me, all my dreams are coming true" post. Writing of any kind takes real effort; it just feels like it isn’t supposed to be this fun.

After almost two decades of work that I loved but which always seemed like it had to carry the weight of seriousness, taking a more lighthearted turn seems like I'm eating dessert first.

My friend challenged my preconceived notions about what a worthwhile contribution has to look like or not. I spent so long feeling like putting out unserious work meant that it didn't have value - but the longer I write this, the more I see that was wrong.

Can I write a well-cited, long-format, pedantic white paper to argue an obscure policy point that exactly zero people will read? Heck yes. But, by the end of it, you'll feel like you ate an entire salad bowl full of unflavored dry oatmeal.

It's this casual and joyful writing for a growing community of the food and animal curious that I love and hope you do too.

I spent too many years feeling like I had to prove to others I was smart and, in doing so, made myself miserable. This was, in retrospect, a very dumb thing to do.

Like urban farming, this writing is a constant struggle with letting go of those aspects of my identity that no longer fit. The more I can loosen my grip and release the need to assert that weight, the more I find it ironically appears.

Joyful goofiness is not inherently frivolous, just as heavy dryness does not necessarily equal substance. There is no shortage of very serious and miserable people in the world. I should know, I was one of them.

Thank you for joining me on this journey of reevaluating what has merit (or not). I'm learning that the less I feel I have to prove, the more things I do.

Life is ridiculous that way, so let's laugh at it together; eat the dessert already.

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Thank you for all the nice notes and messages this week. My friend George asked for my gardening guide (a la my Thanksgiving printable) and I love that idea so I'm going to start on it.

Send other ideas or post them in the comments!

I hate to be a broken record, but most of my growth has come from people sharing this newsletter with others, so if you share it, you're helping me achieve my dream of being a goat writer. It's a job I made up.

Thank you as always!

<3, K