Girl, not I skipped the whole month of May. My last post was April 24th. It’s now June 3rd and here I come clicking on this website editing app as I sit on a bench in the bookstore.
Well, I was in the Caribbean for a week [nervous smile]. I suppose that doesn’t explain where went the rest of the month.
I will say, I have been writing in my journal every day… almost, almost everyday.
Aïe aïe aïe.
Last week, I received an email informing me that this private-esque library (that I much prefer to any LAPL or LA County Library) would be reopening this week and I immediately made a reservation for three consecutive days. I said I’m going to report to that library as if it were an office I’m paid to be present! I’ll try not to be annoyingly early to the employees, while making sure that I’m amongst the first to walk through the door.
Mm. It was a thought. A serious thought. A really, really serious thought. I wrote it on the new desktop calendar I’ve implemented and all: [in blue] WRITERS ROOM 11am. I chose blue ink as nothing else on the foot-tall, foot-and-a-half wide pad is written in blue. The color blue is hideous, but blue gives business and I mean business!
My visitor pass to wear, given by security upon checking in reads, time in: 4:06.
That’s better than not having gone at all. No?
Here’s what I wrote.
mercredi 3 juin 2026
Writer’s Room
16:21
All roads point to Substack?
Sins and Solitude
column name that came to mind some time ago, prior to B. Barry bringing up the platform on our way to/from Coachella’s Revolve Festival
Can I be honest? I’m scared. Big, bad me. Scared.
Really, really, put myself out there? Whew child.
It was much easier to hide behind the L.A. of aroundLAwithTK, and I’m still tucked away after dropping L.A., presenting my scribbles on a screen via the [dot]com AROUNDwithTK ‘cause it’s only me and my cousin Randi here! It’s my teeny tiny corner of the World Wide Web and who’s ever here came here by his or her own will; it’s not the result of me putting something all in people’s face on a public platform that nobody asked to see!
There’s so much sh*t on social media that people should keep, starting with newborn babies! Ew. I don’t want that to be me. Mmm, she coulda kept dat…
I want to make an honorable offering to the ether. Though I realize, Substack isn’t where I’ll earn a Pulitzer Prize, at the very least, let the words I share do for others what well-written poetry or prose does for me.
When I read <u> I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings </u>, I’m living her life for a moment. Even sitting here in the library thinking about it, asking myself, “what is it that I enjoy about reading [when I enjoy reading],” my mind flashes back to being aboard a Carnival cruise ship’s highest desk on a hammock under the shade with Angelou’s book in hand, feeling the ocean breeze. Though I may have been floating in the middle of the sea, her words anchored me. Stable, steady and resilient in the right now from reading words she wrote on her childhood. (I just looked it up, 86 years she lived, and I was reading this after she’d died, so that puts her childhood having been darn near a century ago, yet her writing brought me there.)
[library closes]
Do I really want to write and release a column on Substack?
[teeth clench]
Okay, this isn’t to say that if I’m not a modern day Maya Angelou, miss me with it, but… Basically.
[rolls eyes]
Be soooo ffr, TK.
Did Marguerite Ann Johnson know she was going to become THE Maya Angelou?! I want an answer to that question. Was Maya Angelou writing poetry, before acclaim and recognition, because she knew that she knew that she KNEW she had that pie-yow?! That fye! Powerful, fervent words to share — did Maya Angelou know that this had been placed within her and it was her responsibility to get it out? Or, was she simply doing what she felt moved to do without having a clue?
I don’t know, it’s as if I need to KNOW that I got that yeah. I can’t think that I have it. I’m mildly disgusted by people that think they have it and they don’t — I never want to be one of them.
I know that I have it — when it comes to linguistics, oratory ability, structuring spoken words into text, and most of all, passion for the relaying of meaningful or moving messages, oh baby, I got that sh*t, I got it. However, that’s me, and who tf am I?
It’s a conundrum, isn’t it? Yeah..
I am scared to start a Substack.
What if it works? What if I start a Substack and it works? What if I gain attention? What if people start regarding me as a writer? What if people love me then take their love away?
“It’s better to try and fail than to never have tried at all,” or whatever dumb ass sh*t somebody said. Not trying hasn’t broken my heart yet.
Then, I’ll have exposed myself for nothing?
I was trying to think of what I can write that’s not close to me… I drew a blank. In the words of Erykah Badu, I’m an artist and I’m sensitive about my sh*t. I don’t care if I’m writing a review of The Cat in the Hat, it’s personal, and I take it personally.
It is personal. It is not business.
At almost every job I’ve had (and I’ve had plenty), I’ve been given the boot. Listen to me when I say, I couldn’t give less of a flying f*ck about getting fired from not nan one of ‘em. In the midst of the situation, I may have been heated, but I was never hurt.
My art being under fire, that would hurt.
Don’t do it.
Don’t start a Substack then, TK. Don’t go down a possible path of earning a living as a writer then, TK. When it comes to making money, it’s always gonna be business.
Go get a corporate job to be able to buy ya mama a house one day. Continue writing by hand in your many journals and notebooks to never been seen by eyes other than your own. Don’t dare think about writing a piece with publication in mind.
Simple.
If only I weren’t forced from my hair follicles to my pinky toes to talk, tell stories and commune, and I were blind to my unique abilities to do such exceedingly effectively, I’d never consider it again. This new platform, Substack, wouldn’t have even made my radar beep back when it first did, and B. Barry bringing it up again (unknowingly) a year or so later would’ve gone in one ear and out of the other.
Unfortunately, it’s weighing on me.
Starting a Substack is weighing on me the same way that writing on Medium did, the same way that creating videos on YouTube did, the same way that hosting an interview series did…
Yet, I never did… Or, I did, then I stopped. I made a TikTok swipe once showing some of the projects I’ve picked up and put down.
Is that also what I’m worried about? That I’ll chicken out? Different this time though, I’m saying it up front, I’m scared. I’ve never said that before, that I remember, I was never scared, just… Lazy? Procrastinating? Or, I never realized that I was scared?
As I heavily consider starting a Substack, I can see it, I’m scared. It’s not as if I don’t have the material nor am I lacking the time. I have pages and pages and pages and pages of words that I’ve written that could get me started until I get into the flow of writing specifically for Substack (if that’s the route I go), but no… what do I do? Make excuse after excuse. Until today, when I sat in that library, after arriving five hours later than planned, staring at a blank page, finally, my mind had to say…
I’m scared.
Oop, an associate has come over the intercom in this bookstore. It’s closing. I have to go and I don’t have Internet at home.
What if I sleep on these thoughts, wake up and have magically overcome this bit of fear?! That’ll be lovely! Idk, y’all, talk to me.
Leave a comment below (please don’t text or call me or say let’s talk about this over the phone, nor bring it up in-person; it’s difficult enough for me to admit these feelings on this blog page.)
If you’re an Internet user that randomly stumbled across this little crevice of the web, I welcome your thoughts as well! I actually want to know from you more than I want to hear from folks I know!
AROUNDwithTK currently serves as a space where I’m figuring it out. I’m glad you came for a spin and I hope you’ll stick around.