Happy Thanksgiving to all of my turkeys Otters! No, don’t check your calendar. I live in Canada. We do things differently here.
Speaking of doing things differently! I have a small announcement to make that is unrelated to this Substack! This announcement ONLY applies to folks in my neck of the woods (Mississauga). So, do you remember back in July when this happened?
Yeah, well… IT’S HAPPENING AGAIN!!!
The folks at Future Majority, a local youth-led, non-partisan non-profit, were kind enough to ask me back to read a poem (and crack jokes, of course, but they don’t know that yet) at their Fall Climate Coffee House! It's happening THIS SATURDAY at Studio.89 from 2-3:30. Please pull up if you can! Let's force the city to take real climate action!
You can register by clicking HERE! Hurry up, though - spots are flying fast.
ANYWAYS. This is Ottavia Paluch and you’re reading Things You Otter Know. If the last two months have taught me anything, it’s that university is hard, writing is hard, finding the time to write is hard, and when you do have the time to write, actually deciding to sit down and write is hard.
So after some deliberation, I’ve decided to do something drastic, something I wasn’t ever planning on doing - I’m retiring Otterbiography for the time being.
NO WAIT DON’T UNSUBSCRIBE YET!!!!
Actually, wait, let me stick in a subscriber button just for funsies.
Ok, NOW let me tell you all the reasons why I’m doing this.
I’ve forgotten how to write an Otterbiography. Yeah, bro. I haven’t posted one since the end of July. In related news, today is October the 12th. I have no idea how that happened. What even is time?
They take way too long to write. See, that’s the one part of the writing process that I remember. Those suckers are upwards of 3,000 words on the regular.
My life is boring. You try to sit down and write 3,500 words about your life. About a MONTH in your life, I should say. It’s not easy! Unless you’re Obama and every day in your life is interesting (and stressful.)
I try to make them interesting by including a bunch of different things in it, but compiling those lists together takes a LOT of time. I have to pick songs to include and write 250 words about them. I have to go through everything I’ve posted to my Instagram stories and all the Tweets that I tweeted over the course of the month. That takes…longer than you think, but I’m not going to divulge too much into just how long it is because you don’t need to know how much time I spend on Twitter
a lotNot everyone cares about me. Looking at the stats I’ve noticed that subscriber and viewer count drops off the most during Otterbiography season. Which is disappointing, but not surprising. A lot of the people who are here for my Significant Otters interview series aren’t here for me, and rightly so. Not everyone, let me make that clear, but some of them have.
I want this thing to reach more eyeballs. Strangers, especially. The people who care the most about Otterbiographies are the people who are closest to me and who know me the best. And there’s nothing wrong with that - I sure as hell appreciate having a small, but rabid readership! - but I tend to forget that there are people who don’t know me that well but who like what they’ve been reading here regardless. (Thank you, by the way.) So this change tries to reflect that. I want to reach out to more readers. I want more people to take notice of my work. I think it’s okay for me to say that. I spend a lot of time on this thing.
Writing Otterbiographies aren’t fun anymore. Because of all of the above reasons, the writing of these columns has started to feel like a slog. I would much rather talk about other things that I’m passionate about rather than about myself. I’m not special or enormously talented or anything that would require me to talk about myself extensively. I know blogs are supposedly the place where you talk about yourself, but this is my blog, goddamnit. And I shouldn’t have to feel withheld by these arbitrary restrictions I’ve created for myself. Like, this whole thing is supposed to be FUN! Writing is supposed to be FUN! Making jokes about John Mayer is supposed to be FUN! So WHY am I making it so hard for and on myself???
Maybe there will come a day or month where I’ll revive this column and you’ll all whoop and cheer. Who knows? (I sure don’t.)
Otherwise I think I’ll just post some me-stuff in a shorter, separate post. Or I’ll just embed some of it into these letters as I see fit. Like that event I mentioned off the top! I’ll talk about that sometime for sure.
As for the lists of stuff that I’ve been enjoying, like books and music and whatever, I might just take some time in December and make some giant lists of stuff I liked this year. But it is also exam season during that time. So who knows? (I clearly haven’t thought this thing through yet.)
For now, though, I just want to write about whatever the hell I want to write about. Which was always the goal of this blog. It’s important that I love writing it and that it doesn’t feel like a chore. I don’t plan on abandoning this thing anytime soon and I don’t want you to, either. (You can, if you want. But also, like, don’t.)
Looking ahead!
This might be a shorter post than usual, but I’ll be spending the rest of my week—reading week!— writing, writing, and, well, writing. Most of it for school, ugh, but hopefully the rest for this blog. I’ve gotten a lot done already over the last few days, but I don’t want to tell you what’s happening next because plans often change. What I can tell you is are the following three things:
Next week, we’ll be diving into all things When We Were Young Fest! Which is a brand new music festival that Live Nation’s putting on next weekend in Las Vegas. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, brush up ASAP because we are gonna get deep into emo lore and I CANNOT WAIT.
Significant Otters, my monthly writer interview series, isn’t going anywhere! You and I both love it too much. Our guest for October is… bro, you thought I was going to give it away THIS soon? Do you even KNOW me????
Expect a few bonus, miscellaneous interviews! With folks that I’ve interviewed for DOMINONATED, a Canadian music site that I occasionally contribute to, and The Medium, my school’s newspaper that I occasionally contribute to. I’m doing this for two reasons: 1) my lovely readers are fed every week regardless of whether I have time to write or not, and 2) the conversations I’ve been having with these people will interest you regardless of what you’re into.
I hope you’ll stick around as we navigate this lil change to my lil Substack. As always, thanks so much for reading Things You Otter Know, and I’ll see you next week.
🦦 —O— 🦦