Here's what Slow Dopamine is about.
Focusing on the unhurried, fullfilling, hard-earned pleasures in life.
Hello. Hi. Nice to see ya. Welcome to my substack! I’m so glad you’re here reading these words.
Let me start by saying this: Even six months ago, I did not anticipate myself being someone who would start a substack. In fact, I’ve grown increasingly anxious about most forms of social media.
I’m on Facebook approximately four times a year. I peek onto Twitter sometimes (sorry, always gonna be Twitter to me) to see trends or Knicks news and inevitably end up skittering away after taking in some horrific display of casual cruelty or twisted take on the day’s news.
I joined BlueSky late last year, and though it’s a lovely contrast, the urge to regularly communicate in that way, like I did circa 2014-2019, just isn’t there. I also joined TikTok last year. Could not handle it. I was encouraged by some of my friends that I would acclimate, that the Algorithm would quickly learn what I liked and it would get less overwhelming. That did not convince me.
I’m still active on Instagram, my favorite of these platforms, but I use the word “favorite” incredibly loosely. Most often my experience there is something like:
Look at that adorable child! Can’t believe she’s turning 5! Look at that horrific war scene! I need to be doing more! Look at that new book deal for that author I love! So happy for them and I genuinely mean what I’m saying in this excited comment on their post but also I can’t help but reflect on my own shortcomings! I need to be doing more!
After even a few minutes of this, my emotions are bouncing around so fast that I can barely understand what I’m feeling at any given second. I log off, slamming the door behind me like I’m being trailed by a horde of zombies. It often leaves me with a nagging sense in the pit of my stomach, not unlike Kate McCallister’s on the plane to Paris, that something is amiss.
KEVIN!
Beyond the sheer volume of dissonant personal/political/career-related information to take in, I also just—sometime in the last five years—got tired of viewing my life through a content filter. Ooh! I bet this funny moment from my life will get a lotta likes! I know I’m not alone in this. It’s not fun, it doesn’t feel good, and the validation and feedback from posting this kind of content can be really nice but it’s not very nourishing. It’s thin. Flimsy. I’ve found hard proof in my daily existence, over these fifteen or so years of interacting with social media, that true contentment does not lie therein. (WHICH IS IRONIC BECAUSE THE WORD CONTENT IS LITERALLY IN THE WORD CONTENTMENT)
And nowadays, when we know so much more about the profit-motive at play within these tech corporations, we understand that these are not neutral systems and they aren’t exactly free either—these are algorithms designed first and foremost to keep us engaged at any cost, and the price we pay is incurred in the reams of personal data we hand over along with the increasingly valuable commodity that is our attention.
Not that I have strong feelings about this or anything. Ha.
So, in light of all that, I haven’t been on Instagram as much in the past year and, when I do post, it’s things that I know will bring me joy and/or fulfillment and/or a sense of purpose regardless of what feedback or validation comes in: the silly-serious songs I write, the posts that lift up books & TV & movies I love, the posts that spread the word about activism to save our ailing country/world, and, of course, the posts that PROMOTE MY BOOKS.
See, there’s the biggest rub. I write books for a living. Funny Young Adult and Middle Grade novels. I’m proud of these books. I want people to know about these books. And, even better, to read them! Aside from a book I co-wrote with famous YouTube stars, my books have not (yet!) been best-sellers.
That said, there are many people who have read and enjoyed my books! And to those people—very likely you, reading this right now—I am so grateful. Thank you. I can’t express it enough. These books simply cannot and would not exist without people out there engaging with them, connecting to characters like Denton and Winnie, thinking about and relating to what they’re going through, and hopefully laughing at a minimum of 80% of the parts I intended to be funny.
Which brings us back to here. Me. Starting this substack. As I’ve read substacks over this past year like Jessica Craven’s fantastic activism-focused Chop Wood, Carry Water, Jay Kuo’s grounding political/legal analysis in The Status Kuo, and my wonderful author friend Kathryn Holmes’s Booked in Brooklyn, I’ve started to feel like: oh, maybe a substack could be a space where I can connect with my readers and write about life and my writing process in ways that are less neatly packaged and constrained by the scroll of Instagram.
And that sounded really good to me. We live in a world of screens and corner-cutting apps designed for the fast, quickly-fleeting pleasure of high-spiking dopamine hits, and I am working every day to find a way to live in a slow dopamine space. The unhurried, focused, fulfilling, hard-earned pleasures—those that create a slowly-sloping curve of gradual dopamine release—which, uncoincidentally, includes the very process of writing itself.
And so I’m hoping this substack can be a small nudge in that direction. To be clear, I’m not referencing dopamine in terms of productivity hacks and “Low Dopamine Mornings” although I do think there is much wisdom in that. But I’m not here to productivity hack. (AI certainly is, though!) I just want my brain, and your brain, to feel a little slower. More fulfilled. More contented. (While being UN-CONTENTed.)
So that’s my hope. I’ll be writing about my own creative process, doing short written interviews with other great humans about their creative process (starting next week with musical theater writer extraordinaire Joe Iconis), recommending art I love, and grappling with how to resist this stupid tech world we live in. Oh, and yes, also, at times, promoting my books.
This will be a free weekly newsletter for now and the foreseeable future. If you enjoy it, tell your friends! And then read my books!
Thank you for being here. I truly appreciate it.
Let the contentment begin.