Experimental Wolves

Posted on by Erin Bartels

Once upon a time, oh, about 20 years ago, blogs took the online world by storm and dominated the way many people interacted with the internet (beyond looking up information). It was a beautiful time to be someone who enjoyed writing or reading longform creative nonfiction.

I followed several blogs closely and others more casually. Some were about something. Sewing, quilting, vintage patterns, crochet mandalas. Some were more general in content, but they attracted me with their beautiful photos and distinctive voice. Some were humorous or whimsical. Some were aspirational. All of the writers felt like friends. All of them developed a community around their writing of frequent commenters that began to feel a bit like the various groups of people who hung out together at school. They were people you wished you could hang out with in real life. But at least you got to see them online.

Then came Facebook. And Instagram. And Twitter. And people stopped reading and sharing blogs in favor of quick dopamine hits from likes and retweets. Those of us who blogged started linking to our longform writing on our social media platforms of choice to remind people we were still writing. Nevertheless, the readership dropped.

Algorithms preferred posts that didn’t include links that would lead people away from the platform they were on. The community splintered. Blogs went quiet. And we all settled in for a decade of inanity and cat videos and a constant bombardment of political tirades and advertisements for chintzy products that would be shipped, eventually, from China and then turn out to be something other/worse than what we ordered.

And then…Substack appeared.

Substack, it seems, is filling in the void that shuttered blogs left behind. When I first became aware of the platform several years ago, I immediately thought, “I want to start a Substack.” But I wasn’t sure what it would be about. So I waited. And waited. And waited.

Until finally a few wisps of ideas coalesced into something a bit more tangible. Thus was born Experimental Wolves.

Experimental Wolves is my attempt at reestablishing the kind of writing and the kind of community I enjoyed before I was so busy with feeding the publishing machine. Before I was encouraged to build a following on social media. Before I lived on my stupid phone.

It’s my opportunity to write some longform nonfiction that encourages writers at any stage of their career and offers a behind-the-scenes look at the life of a working writer. It’s also my opportunity to do some teaching and prompting for writers who are just starting out, who a busy or blocked, or who want to brainstorm with other writers but haven’t found a local writing group that suits them.

I’ve run into many such writers when a speak at conferences, libraries, and bookstores. Folks who know they want to write but feel a bit at a loss about how to grow or share what they’re doing now. Experimental Wolves is one way for us to all get together online and build a community.

If you’re a writer who used to read this blog (when I was actually blogging regularly) I encourage you to read the first post and give it a try. There are both free and paid subscriptions, so you can try it out at no cost and see if it’s something that feeds your muse or gives you a bit of motivation or encouragement on the journey. If you want to join in “the pack” of paid subscribers, that will get you access to special content, including weekly writing prompts and ideas to keep you writing, even when you’re in a dry spell.

I hope you’ll join me on Substack as we build a supportive, generous, and kind community of writers!

 

Making Peace with the Time We Have

Posted on by Erin Bartels

I have been thinking a lot lately about time. This is partly because over the past fifteen months I have seen three lives cut short–two by alcohol, one by cancer. It is partly because I am in my forties and I’m due for some mid-life melancholy and reflection on what I’ve done with my life so far and what I might still accomplish. And it is partly because I am purposefully slowing my publishing pace after turning in my sixth novel manuscript to my editor last month.

As I transition from a rather lengthy season of frantic activity, interrupted only briefly and incompletely by a global pandemic (I say incompletely because I never stopped working, I probably increased the number of events I was involved in through the expanded use of Zoom, and I was also under deadline the entire time), I have been trying to stop the spinning wheels of my brain and imagine a different pace of life and a different set of priorities.

I’ve been asking myself questions. What is the best use of my time? What time of day is best for what activity? How hard should I push to get through the (rather lengthy) household to-do lists I’ve written? How can I retrieve the person I once was–the person to whom it would never occur to question whether a few hours spent ambling around a forest was “wasted” time? Is that unhurried, in-tune-with-herself person still in there somewhere? That girl who never felt guilty about leaving her chores undone?

Because I miss her.

 

 

Some months ago I was reading How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now by James K. A. Smith. I underlined a lot of lines in that book. Lines like:

“Our past is not what we’ve left behind; it’s what we carry….We are called to live forward, given our history, bearing both its possibilities and its entanglements.”

“The horizons that circumscribe you are not fencing you out of something but entrusting you to this field of possibility. What’s thrown your way is what you can do.”

“Some years are longer than others.”

“Seasons can be expected and are something that befall us rather than something we bring on. It is important to recognize this so we don’t confuse a season with our identity, nor imagine that a season is either a reward or a punishment…. We can’t hasten either their arrival or their end.”

During Lent I have spent some time reading another book, In Good Time: 8 Habits for Reimagining Productivity, Resisting Hurry, and Practicing Peace by Jen Pollock Michel. Again, I underlined a lot (this is why I can’t get books from the library). From Michel, I took things like:

“Here’s what productivity and efficiency and time management fail to get right. The hours, like our bodies, like the world, aren’t under our control.”

“I come to learn what it means to receive the offering of another’s unhurried presence.”

“People forget love is a project of forbearance, a waiting with and waiting out. If transformation is slow in us, why can’t it also be slow in others?”

“Self-help is an industry that enthrones the self, and though this can at times feel empowering, it’s ultimately defeating. Your problems are always yours to solve through your efforts and cunning and self-discipline. Self-improvement is an exhausting, thriving business.”

“Living the Lord’s time is always a resistance movement. We will not find joy…in the three sirens of consumerism: comfort, control, and convenience….We don’t lack joy simply because we’re running too fast. It’s that we are hurrying past life and the ‘resonant’ encounters we might have with it.”

 

 

Though Smith is denser and more philosophical and Michel is grounded more in the day-to-day experience of life, I recommend both to those who are seeking to find some healthy third way, beyond the cult of productivity and hustle and that of endless slack-jawed social media scrolling. Both recognize that the way many of us have been thinking about our time is deeply self-focused and at the same time (ironically) self-destructive.

Both of these books continually come around to the admonition to number our days, to remember that we will die, that our time here is finite. But neither author then comes to the conclusion you might think obvious–namely, if time is finite I better pack as much as possible into the time I have, whether in amusements and experiences or in productive labor that will make a positive change in the world.

Yes, each admits, we are bound in some ways by linear time. We are born, we live, and we die, never knowing which will be our last day. But instead of rushing us along to the next thing on our to-do list or bucket list, Smith and Michel instead speak of attitudes of anticipation, participation, reflection, and, incredibly, contentment. These feel like things I want to have in my life. These feel like rhythms I could maintain.

Maybe like me you have a long list of projects around the house that should get done. Or maybe you have a five-year plan you’re trying put into action (or resuscitate after it was stymied by COVID). Or maybe you’re sitting there twiddling your thumbs with absolutely no idea what to do with your time. In any case, it’s worth taking the time to really think about how we want to spend our limited time here.

Time is so often seen as our enemy as we are continually looking for more of it, running out of it, keeping an eye on it. But our time, however long it is, is a gift to us. How much better to make peace with it and learn how to live within its bounds, hold our plans lightly, and continually look to our Creator for the wisdom and grace to use it well. Not to use it up, to squeeze every last drop of productivity out of it. But to enjoy it.

 

Some Thoughts on the Spring Equinox

Posted on by Erin Bartels

It’s the first day of spring and in my corner of the world it is sunny and windy and warming. Our shadowed days turn toward light as surely and unstoppably as the daffodil and tulip bulbs send out shoots that stretch toward the surface.

In the Midwest, it nearly always feels like spring is slow in coming, especially as our friends in more southerly climes share pictures of blossoming trees while ours are yet covered with ice. But it always comes. And, if Facebook Memories are to be trusted, it basically always comes around the same time, so what are we complaining about? We know how this goes.

In this season of cackling sandhill cranes and chortling songbirds, of trash blown into the yard from the nearby shopping center, of swelling buds and sunshine you can actually feel, we begin to think of outdoor projects, outdoor exercise, outdoor cooking and dining. What will be the first day we wear sandals, the first day we walk barefoot on the grass? When will we get out the bikes? When will we grill that first steak? (For us, last week.)

We also think of lasts. When was the last time I wore this? The last time I used this? Off it goes to the thrift store or onto Craigslist. Students look forward to the last test, the last class. I wonder to myself, when did I last wash these windows? Could it truly have been three years ago?

When did I last have something to say on this blog?

We open windows and let that fresh, fresh feeling in. That newness. That scent of snowmelt and soil. That beautiful promise of warmer days. They are just ahead. So close, you can almost taste them.

Spring is the future, now.

Celebrate Women’s Fiction Day with Events and Giveaways!

Posted on by Erin Bartels

June 8th is Women’s Fiction Day! If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you’ll be seeing a lot about Women’s Fiction Day this week, including great authors you’ll want to follow, books to add to your TBR list, special events, and LOTS of amazing giveaways.

If you enjoy books that follow a protagonist through an emotional journey toward greater self-awareness and fulfilment, you probably read a lot of Women’s Fiction, even if you didn’t realize that’s what the industry calls it. Women’s fiction is not necessarily written by women. It’s not fiction written just for women. And it’s not even necessarily fiction about women. But the primary writers and readers seem to be women, and quite often (though not always) the protagonist is female.

But women grow up reading (and continue reading) books written by men about men, so why shouldn’t men read books written by women about women?

What distinguishes Women’s Fiction is that is does not rely on tropes or formulae that genres like Romance or Cozy Mystery or Suspense do. There might be romance, or there might not. There might be a mystery, or there might not. There might be a happy ending, or a story might end in tragedy, or in some bittersweet spot in between.

Women’s Fiction can be contemporary or historical or time-slip or happen in some future imagined time.

It’s a wildly entertaining and wide-ranging genre and I’m excited to introduce to you some authors who may be new to you, so be sure to follow me on Facebook or Instagram to get in on all the Women’s Fiction Day fun. On June 7th, I’ll be posting a TON about other writers, most of whom are running Women’s Fiction Day giveaways on the 8th. Then on June 8th, I’ll also be offering you a way to enter my own giveaway, where you can win a copy of each of my four Women’s Fiction novels.

Be sure to follow and share with your reading friends!

 

Hurrah, Hurray, It’s Book Release Day!

Posted on by Erin Bartels

 

All That We Carried is available now, everywhere books are sold, including these fine establishments:

Baker Book House

Schuler Books & Music

IndieBound

Barnes & Noble

Target.com

Amazon

Christianbook.com

 

Catch me talking about All That We Carried (and taking your questions) tonight and Thursday. Both events are free but require registration to get the links.

JANUARY 5
Book Launch Event for All That We Carried – Online – 7:00pm EST
Hosted by Schuler Books & Music. Register here for this free event. You must register by at least 2 hours prior to the event.

JANUARY 7
Book Launch Event for All That We Carried – Online – 7:00pm EST
Hosted by Baker Book House. Register here for this free event. You must register by at least 2 hours prior to the event.

 

You can also hear me talking about the book (and about writing in general) as the first guest of a brand new podcast for writers from author Ginny L. Yttrup. Click here to hear the first episode of the Words for Writers podcast.

Waiting vs. Anticipating

Posted on by Erin Bartels

waiting: the action of staying where one is or delaying action until a particular time or until something else happens.

anticipating: regarding as probable; expecting or predicting.

 

Now, I know I’m not the first person who’s come up with positioning these two attitudes against each other. But it struck me this morning just how dramatically different it feels to wait for something than it does to anticipate something. Waiting feels overwhelmingly negative. Anticipating feels brightly positive.

As a kid, when you’re waiting for the slowest person to get out of bed on Christmas morning so you can open presents, you feel more irritated impatience than joyful anticipation. When you are waiting in line, you’re not smiling at the thought of getting out of the store—you’re scowling at how slowly the person in front of you is sorting through coupons and haggling about sale prices. When you wait on hold on a customer service call, you’re not anticipating with glee being able to get on with your life (ever).

Waiting feels bad. Anticipating feels good.

When we anticipate a fun trip, we get to participate in it before it even begins by planning our itinerary, learning about the place we’re going to visit, making plans to meet up with a friend while we’re there. We get to daydream. We look forward to it with longing, but that longing is joyful because we know what awaits us will be fun, an adventure, a break from the normal, boring routine of life (which I think we’re all feeling really keenly right now, aren’t we?).

When we are actually at the airport and our plane is delayed, that’s when joyful anticipating transforms into anxious, irritated waiting. Will I miss my connecting flight? Will I not have time to do everything I planned? Will my luggage get to the right destination? Will the woman next to me ever stop talking so loudly into her cell phone about deeply private matters?

Just look at the definition of waiting. The action of staying where one is…until something else happens. The act of being passive. The act of doing nothing until we are told the time is now. The very definition feels contrary, so we feel contrary while we’re doing it.

Waiting for a table at a restaurant. Waiting for the storm to pass so we can get on that plane. Waiting for someone to call or respond to an email. Waiting for someone to forgive us. None of this feels good.

We’ve all been doing a lot of waiting this year. Waiting to see what the next restriction will be. Waiting until our hairdresser can get back to work. Waiting for the newest numbers and charts. Waiting until we can get together again. Waiting for dine-in to resume at restaurants. Waiting for borders to open to nonessential travel. Waiting for vaccines. Waiting for the day we can stop wearing masks. Waiting for the day we can hug and shake hands with impunity.

So. Much. Waiting.

I’ve always thought of Advent as a time of waiting. Waiting for Christmas. Waiting for God the Father to send God the Son. (There’s an interesting aside here about waiting for God the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, which really was waiting for something to happen…but that’s a whole other discussion.) But basically, yeah…waiting for God to do something He said He would.

Personally, I have been waiting to feel better about myself after screwing up something big in my personal life. I’ve received forgiveness, but I’m still waiting to feel anything more than shame and contempt for myself. It’s not a great feeling. And I’m not sure what else needs to happen before I’ll feel better.

Our natural tendency as a year draws to a close is to take stock of what has passed and make plans for what’s to come. To anticipate what the next year will bring. I wonder how many of us are hesitant to do that this time around. I know I am. I had so many events canceled last year, I don’t have the heart to go through the same thing next year.

Though I am starting to fill up the early months of the year with virtual book events, I am eagerly awaiting the time when I can get back to doing events in person. My family already rescheduled our trip to Yellowstone for June, and I’m worried we still won’t be back to normal by then. I am already planning next September’s WFWA writing retreat in Albuquerque and wondering if we can accommodate as many people as we usually do.

I am anticipating some good things next year—not simply waiting for them to happen, but expecting them to happen, preparing for them to happen—even if my normal joy in such planning is tempered by fear of cancelation, or at least complication.

And that’s really what Advent is. It’s not just waiting for God to do something. It’s expecting it, regarding it as probable. It’s having real hope which is grounded in the fact that He has fulfilled His promises in the past and so He will fulfill this one as well. It’s preparing for it. Preparing our houses, sure, but far more importantly, preparing our hearts.

When you’re expecting a baby, you don’t just wait for it to be born. You prepare for it. You learn about it. You buy furniture and equipment and diapers and bottles and a hundred other things. And you anticipate with joy the coming of this new life into yours.

I want to feel better about myself after my personal failing. But just waiting for that to happen is pointless. Rather, I should anticipate it happening by actively working toward wholeness. I’ve taken some first steps by asking for and receiving forgiveness. I’m taking more steps by getting some good advice from godly friends, praying more frequently and more fervently, and beginning a purposeful study of Scripture.

I want to feel more hopeful about next year, but if all I do is wait for the news to be better that’s not going to help my mental state. Instead, I can anticipate it by making my plans joyfully, fully expecting that by June most people will be vaccinated and our Yellowstone trip can feel mostly normal, and further that by September things will be even better.

Because, yes, there were times 2020 has felt interminable. But aren’t most of us kind of amazed it’s already basically over? Why should the next six to twelve months be any different? Instead of just waiting Covid out, I want to anticipate it being over by using the next several months well. Finishing a manuscript, doing some projects around the house, starting to exercise more regularly. All the stuff that we didn’t have the mental or physical energy for this year as we simply dealt with the constantly changing reality and rules around us—that’s the stuff we can start doing now that there is some hope on the horizon.

Hope is the key.

Romans 8:18-25 says,

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

That’s Advent. That’s anticipating. That’s expecting, predicting, regarding as probable.

Maybe for me 2021 will be one long Advent season, waiting with patience and expectation for things to be made whole—including myself—believing with absolute trust that it will come to pass…because God promised it would.

Awards Season?

Posted on by Erin Bartels

I was thrilled to find out yesterday that my second novel, The Words between Us, is a finalist for the 2020 Christy Award.

 

Last year, We Hope for Better Things was a finalist as well. And a couple weeks ago We Hope for Better Things won the 2020 Star Award from the Women’s Fiction Writers Association in both the debut and general categories.

So it has been an exciting couple of weeks!

But probably the most exciting thing? I don’t have to buy a new furnace.

Awards for a job well done are a great boost to the ego (and hopefully to sales as well) but when it comes to endorphins and good feelings coursing through your body, nothing beats being told that you will not have to shell out $4,000-$6,000 dollars just yet.

I’m going into the weekend warm and toasty, inside and out.

Taking Back 2020

Posted on by Erin Bartels

On January 2nd of this year, I turned 40. I had one overarching goal for my 40th year on the planet: live with intention. Basically, decide beforehand how I was going to spend my days, choose my reactions to setbacks, make some purposeful changes in how I was spending my time, etc. etc. etc. I bought a 365-day journal with the intent to record this very intentional year.

It was going to be a big one. I had a full calendar of writing and book events lined up. I was anticipating making a little extra money from them, garnering a little extra name recognition, building a little bigger network of fellow writers. I thought to myself, in my delightful naiveté, that this would be a year of building my career. This is where I would lay the foundation for future success.

And wouldn’t you know it, things didn’t go according to plan.

I abandoned the journal in early February because it was straight-up boring. I mean, who cares what I did each and every day? If I didn’t, certainly posterity wouldn’t. Gone.

And then…well, you know. Everyone’s plans went up in smoke. Our family trip to Yellowstone was canceled. The writers retreat I direct in Albuquerque was canceled. Nearly twenty events at libraries, book clubs, bookstores, and conferences were canceled.

I thought, well at least I can use that extra time to write more. [Insert sick, desperate laugh.]

There’s something about a pandemic and a 24-hour news cycle and the dumpster fire that is social media that really hijacks one’s concentration if you let it. Add in a kid suddenly home from school 24/7 and you’ve got a recipe for slow writing. Or, no writing for awhile.

Instead of being intentional and proactive, I, like many of you I would imagine, found myself in reactionary mode for about six months. My schedule, my comings and goings, my very thoughts felt like they were not my own. This was the most unintentional year I could remember.

And yet…

There were some things I did manage to make happen. I finally got the new fence I had been needing/wanting for the backyard. I lost fifty pounds and starting fitting into my old clothes. I spent a lot more time outside over the summer, reading, working, and yes, even writing a little. (Thank you, Lord, for such incredible summer weather this year.)

And there were some things that happened to me that were good. Because everyone in the world now knows how to use Zoom, I was able to talk to a number of far-flung (as well as local) book clubs and libraries, the furthest afield being a book club in Honduras. I won both the debut and general categories of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association’s 2020 Star Awards for my debut novel, We Hope for Better Things, which also had the honor of being selected as a Michigan Notable Book for 2020.

But the thing that I think has really been a turning point for me, mentally and emotionally, is that I kept something precious to me rather than losing it to a virus. Instead of loosening my grip and accepting that in this world, in this year, I will not be able to do this, I squeezed a little tighter and did something anyway. Even though there was some risk involved. Even though it meant spending money we should have saved. Even though it would invite public censure on social media (see my last post for another positive, intentional action taken in the wake of that).

What I kept was my annual writers retreat in Albuquerque. Not the retreat I’d carefully planned for nearly 100 writers. Not the retreat with the notable speaker and all the great food and all the socializing with writer friends. All I kept was a plane ticket and a hotel reservation. All I brought was some clothes and my laptop and my intentions of getting some writing done. All I wanted was time alone in a place I had grown to love and to need in my life over the past six years.

And I got it. Well, perhaps I should say I got it and then some. Not only did I get precious alone time after a season of everyone being stuck in the house; not only did I get time and mental space to write; not only did I get to spend five days in a hotel that feels like a second home to me…I also got community–unexpected, unintentional, and unequivocally soul-restoring community–at the best cigar shop I have ever been to.

An acquaintance local to Albuquerque told me about it and then, when Uber was uberexpensive, was kind enough to drive me to it in order to pick out some gifts for my husband. This friend smoked his first cigar as I perused the largest humidor I’ve ever set foot in and pawed through a gorgeous selection of pipes. I made my purchases after consulting with the very personable owner of the store (the third generation of his family to run it) and chatted with some other patrons–members of the store’s private cigar club–as I finished my own cigar and the glass of bourbon the owner poured for me. Then I figured I had imposed upon my driver long enough and was going say my thank yous and have him drive me back to the hotel.

Instead, one of the cigar club members invited me on a tour of the private lounge. After the tour, another gentleman who was in the lower level (yes, this amazing lounge had multiple levels and rooms) of the club invited me to sit down. I had already finished my cigar and my bourbon and I felt I had abandoned my ride, so I demurred. But the thing is, I didn’t want to leave yet. And these guys didn’t want me to leave. I was handed another bourbon, another cigar, and prevailed upon to stay. Eventually other guys came rolling into the room until I was holding court with five men, only one of whom I’d ever met before that afternoon.

Full disclosure so that you can gauge how incensed you should be at me right now: no, we were not wearing masks (hard to smoke a cigar through a mask) and no, we weren’t a full six feet apart. Probably we managed an average of four feet of distance. Yes, we were inside. Yes, I had shaken every one of their hands (at their initiation), as well as the hands of nearly every man who had entered when we were just standing around talking and smoking in the non-club portion of the store. These men ranged in age from their mid-20s to around 60. They worked in law enforcement, health care, the film industry, the news industry, in finance, for the military. And every single one of them made me feel…welcome, at ease, happy.

In a year of hunkering down and not even seeing the people I’ve known for years (or in some cases, for my entire life) I was introduced to this new community of instant friends. I was made to feel utterly welcome in what has become a very stand-offish world. The things I said were not met with raised hackles and links to articles to show why I was wrong/careless/borderline evil/probably a murderer. I was not walking on eggshells about how I worded things or anticipating the objections or arguments to come. I was not dreading the fallout from simply being myself.

I was just…there. Amongst people who were in all ways generous and gracious to each other and to me. They gave away pieces of themselves to a stranger in their midst, sharing their stories, trusting me to be gentle with them, to take them at face value, to simply derive enjoyment from them. We had nothing to gain from one another beyond a few hours of congeniality. But I don’t think you realize how truly precious such a thing is until it has been stolen from you, first by an invisible virus and then by the near-constant piling on of guilt that accompanies your every action in a world where everyone is watching and feels they have a sacred, self-appointed responsibility to judge and condemn you for each and every small way you deviate from their impossibly high expectations of you.

We had such a great time chatting, six hours flew by. We all missed dinner.

Here’s the thing about meeting someone new in the context of having no “mutual friends.” When you meet someone new, apart from your previous relationships and work and accomplishments, apart from your carefully crafted online persona, you get to see yourself in as pure a form as you are likely to get in this life. They are meeting you, undiluted, unadulterated you. Not you the student or you the wife or you the mother or you the writer or you the former football star or you the once prom queen or you the executive or you the mechanic or you the failed artist or you the real estate mogul. Just you. You’re an unknown quantity. You’re a risk. And when they take that risk to spend time with you, and then have the exact reaction to you that you wish everyone would have–they find you interesting, charming, intelligent, fun to be around, worth their time and attention–it feels good. It feels like maybe there is something more to you than all the stuff about you.

We all want to feel that we are worth something in and of ourselves, irrespective of who we know or who we married or who we gave birth to, regardless of what we have accomplished and what we have failed to accomplish. And when someone sees that pure spark of you inside and wants more–more time, more stories, more eye contact, more of your attention–it’s intoxicating. It’s the kind of thing that makes you miss a meal and yet never actually miss it. It’s the kind of thing you want to share with other people even if it means you’ll get raked across the coals for daring to leave your house and deciding that social niceties like handshakes are still important and are worth a little risk (and a lot of public censure).

Reader, something important that I realized during this “inessential” trip is that I’m still essentially me. I’m still me, in and of myself, the me I’ve always been. The me that prefers hanging out with guys to hanging out with women. The me that loves hearing other people’s stories more than telling her own. The me that is not afraid to get into a car with people I just met. The me that is done being acted upon by distant forces and judged by distant people.

The me that doesn’t actually care what you think of me.

2020 has been a trial of a year, for sure. But I am taking it back. I am accepting with open arms the unexpected gifts it has given me. There are three months left in the year. Those are my months. I’m going to live them intentionally, without fear, without second guessing, without explaining myself to people who hold no power over me.

How about you?

Breaking Up with Facebook (well…almost)

Posted on by Erin Bartels

It’s felt like a longtime coming, but I finally did it. I finally decided that enough was enough. I’d tried. I’d put in effort and care and time–oh, so much time. But there comes a point at which you have to decide if a relationship is working. And in our world, sometimes there is a point at which you have to decide if hundreds of relationships are working.

For me, they weren’t.

I joined Facebook back in 200…6?…7?…after someone in my graduate program at MSU told me about it. It was fun at first. Actually, it was mostly fun for the first eight or nine years I was on it. And then it became not so fun.

But I stayed engaged, kept accepting friend requests, more and more from people I knew through writing organizations, some I’d never actually met or interacted with but who had mutual friends in the writing community I was involved in. I gathered in people I worked with either in the past or present. I acquired more relatives from my husband’s rather large extended family. I collected some of my relatives’ friends, some brothers and sisters and spouses of people I graduated high school with, some people who read my books and wanted to connect on my personal page rather than my author page.

And it got…difficult. You see, you’d never invite all of these people to the same function in real life. You’d want to connect people who would get along with each other, who would treat each other a certain way. People with similar interests and values. That’s not to say you wouldn’t hang out with everyone in certain contexts, but everyone all at once? Bad idea.

In 2014, Facebook introduced the “unfollow” button. In 2017, it introduced the “snooze” feature. And I used these features liberally in order to tame this list of people I knew, sorta knew, and didn’t know at all, which had grown to more than 1,400.

Now listen, I’m an introvert in a solitary profession who has worked from home since 2005. I do not know 1,400 people. I certainly do not have 1,400 friends. And frankly a lot of those 1,400 people didn’t treat me as a friend would.

A friend–a real friend–knows you. They know your heart. They know that even if you have a different opinion than they do on any given topic, you’re still a decent, intelligent, caring person. They know this because they have actually spent time with you. Real time. In the real world. They’re people you can be honest with and you know that if they disagree they’ll just kind of smile and nod and bite their tongue, then give you a hug and look forward to the next time you see each other.

In the snowballing of my social media accounts, it was those actual friends who seemed to be getting squeezed out on my feed and in comments by “friends” who didn’t know me all that well yet had a lot of opinions about how I should vote, how I should think, and how I should live my life. And social media, while certainly social, wasn’t any fun. And if you don’t have fun with people…why would you spend time with them? Why would you spend time with people who only want to argue or scold or explain how you’re wrong about everything?

Answer: you wouldn’t. No one wants to spend any amount of their leisure time with people like that. And yet we do. All of us do.

It was the summer 2018 that I started yearning for a return to real, offline friendships. That was the year of my 20th high school reunion. That night, I spent time with a few dozen people who, even if some of them weren’t my close friends back in school, even if we had differing opinions on politics or religion or child-rearing, still knew me. In fact, those people I hadn’t seen in 20 years knew me way better than almost anyone I had met since. Because I’m basically the same person as I was back then, though hopefully slightly improved (read: nicer). Many of them had known me since kindergarten. I’d been in real fights with them back when hormones ruled our brains and we’d say anything to get the insult upper hand, and yet I still knew they liked me. I bet none of us could even remember what those fights might have been about.

Not so online, with the arguments that last for days and suck people in from all across the spectrum of your acquaintance. That never resolve, never change anything, never build people up but always manage to knock them down. Day after day on social media, there is instead a steady tearing down, gnawing away. We become afraid to say anything because even though we know it will make this person laugh, it will make that person incensed. The audience is so big you can’t talk to any part of it without stepping in it with another part.

I’ve tried to walk that line for a while. It’s exhausting, disheartening, joy-stealing. But I also didn’t want to unfriend anyone and make them feel bad. I do want to be friendly to people. I don’t want anyone to feel rejected or unwanted. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to them. It’s just that I don’t want to talk to them and everyone else about everything all the time. It just got too big.

Facebook also became a place for me to seek out attention, accolades, likes, comments, and compliments. A place I could puff myself up. A place that fed into my most problematic besetting sin: pride. It feels good to rack up those little hearts and thumbs-ups. And social media companies know that. They know how to keep you coming back for more (watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix if you don’t believe me).

It’s also a place where colossal amounts of my life have been wasted over the past decade plus. And I have far better, more rewarding things to do with my time than scroll. (Read Deep Work if you need some encouragement to rethink how distractions like social media are eating away at your ability to do solid creative work.)

But…I didn’t want to throw the whole thing out. Not yet. I am connected with my writing community through our Facebook groups. I communicate with people coming to the retreat I direct through Facebook. I run my own author page through Facebook. And there are people I’m happy to be able to keep up with through Facebook. I love all the Facebook memories that pop up containing hilarious or sweet things my son has said or done while growing up. I like seeing old photos pop up. And there are some people I connect with on Messenger that I have no other way of contacting at the moment. So I knew I couldn’t quite quit it cold turkey.

What I did do this year was two big waves of unfriending. The first wave, early in 2020, was simply people I realized I didn’t even know. That allowed me to drop 500-600 people from the list. But I still had a list that was too large. What I really wanted was to separate out my personal, professional, and public lives. So I dropped about 750 more people. People I like just fine, but maybe people it was okay to simply see in person once a year and not keep up with the rest of the year. People whom I wish the very best, but am letting go out of my everyday life.

I’m a big believer in white space. Clearing out the stuff you don’t need. Leaving room in the margin. Allowing for empty time in my schedule. Reserving mental space for being creative.

Most of my social media interaction over the past five years can arguably be called clutter. How much of it actually needed to be said? Precious little. How much of it led to unintentionally hurt feelings? Probably more than I know.

So I’m letting it go. Mostly.

If you’re reading this and you were let go, I need you to know that it had everything to do with me and nothing to do with you.

If you’re reading this and wondering how to keep up with me and my newest books, you can follow me any of these places:

But please don’t be offended if I don’t follow back. It’s not you. It’s me.