My intentions were good with this Substack. Write, write, write. I wanted to focus on English writing because not only does it limit the reach to people that I don’t know in real life, but it also prevents my family to stumble on anything compromising I could have written. If you didn’t know, I am Québécoise, meaning I am a native French speaker, and I live in a mostly French (and white) region. Our restaurant menus are in French, every product sold in any physical store must have French labelling, and it’s normal to meet people that genuinely cannot understand a simple English sentence such as “What time is it?”. If they do understand the question, most people (older) cannot answer it properly. “It is eleven hours” can be expect for 11 o’clock.
Writing regularly went great, until I stopped without a warning. It didn’t happen on its own, I also got a bit depressed, stopped listening to many of my once beloved podcasters, and stopped going on the Unspeakeasy platform for women only (a kind of Facebook but with a structure and a paywall), even if I had been wanting and waiting for it for so long. As a (former) news junkie, I also quit reading the news obsessively. Until now, I could not figure out precisely why all those things had become problematic, until I could.
As a Québécoise, I don’t quite fit in the whole Canadian culture. Our French catholic heritage has always been in some sort of conflict with the English Protestant one that characterizes the ROC (Rest of Canada). We are not enemies; we are just different. Not only am I not a United-Stater, I am not really a Canadian either. I love my fellow Canadians, as I love many United-Staters, but they are not my people. Realizing that the whole news, the whole Unspeakeasy, the whole virtual world is still centered on the USA, from Politics to the more dramatic culture wars, Americanocentrism, is all over the place and quite irritating, to be honest. I cannot stand the “Blue versus Red” discourse. Our probable next Prime Minister, the very deprived-from-ideas-but-committed-to-be-against-Trudeau, Pierre Poilièvre, has embraced the GOP vibe, comfortably standing on the right of the line, begging for the Gros Bon Sens (common sense), whatever it means. I didn’t vote Trudeau, and I won’t vote Poilièvre either.
For a while, this whole concept was entertaining, until it was not anymore. I flipped. The sad part is that this Americanocentrism overdose should not have come in the way of my ‘writing’, but this bubble I have surrounded myself with in the past years has contributed to make me believe exactly that, even if I rarely mentioned any right or left position at all. This imaginary line is so polarized, as if it had thorns on one side and feathers on the other. I suppose I simply stopped caring about those issues, or at least I lost some interest, without realizing it, and when it popped, those were all around my virtual life.
Stepping away was beneficial and still is, even though I just subscribed to the Free Press and to BROADview. Many Substack I followed were flushed, I stopped being traumatized by the news, and I chose different ways to still be informed. I also started playing bass, became sort of obsessed with it, strengthening myself in the process. Learning music later in life is amazing, and I discoveredd many qualities I have and I never admitted I had thanks to it, especially patience, courage and tenacity. Maybe I am not the sloppy botchy person I have tried to convince myself I was.
It’s been said once and again, through history, there has been many dark ages, and this dark moment we are experience probably isn’t the darkest, though there are no ways to measure it, and one’s darkness is circumstantial and depends on one’s surroundings. Personally, I think we live in a very dark moment. While so many are starving, some species are going extinct, we live in abundance, meaning we squander precious resources because we can. We rarely ask ourselves if we should buy or do something, but mostly go for it because we can and want. It leads to landfills full of useless but still usable goods and kids (and grownups, sadly) unable to be patient nor thankful. Why not?
Some people are utopic, optimistic. I am the opposite and I have come to peace with it. The culture war is arriving to us now, and our politicians don’t have a clue of how to deal with it. They just want to be on the right side, and it isn’t clear for anyone which side it is. Thankfully, I have lightly distanced myself and I have drawn my own limits on those issues (and hopefully those to come), and I became skeptical, meaning that I won’t just absorb any novelty that is thrown at me be any media, traditional or not, even if I pay for their news. I am becoming so good that I have no opinion on the whole Nazi-in-the-Parliament drama. Unless I learn a hell lot more about who, why, how, I will remain neutral and silent. No, this silence isn’t literally violence. This silence is literally silence.
What now? I suppose I may write again, yet I don’t know what I can bring to the table to anyone who is willing to invest their previous time in reading. Everyone has a Substack now, and there are many who are very good at this. Thanks for reading.
Please comment to let me know you exist.