marking one year of Very Public Secret Society
Thank you, fellow secret keepers! What's the next thing we're exploring together?
After several months (perhaps a year) of thinking about it, I launched this substack1 on August 23, 2022. A little over a year later, I’m delighted I did.
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I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who reads, subscribes, and shares posts. (It’s pretty scary to meet someone for the first time, and they tell you, oh, I’ve read this thing you wrote.) I’m also grateful to those of you who have sent encouragement or asked questions that force me to go deeper into something I’ve written. Part of what makes this fun is knowing that other people are reading and thinking about the same things you’re writing and thinking about.
the journey
And we’ve been thinking about a lot here: the past year has seen almost forty posts.
We’ve talked about art and the imagination. We’ve talked about books (the pain of losing them) and movies (like Wakanda Forever, Violent Night, and Barbie). We’ve talked about bad artists and good art (twice). We’ve talked about stories and what makes really good ones like Andor superior and how we need more stories that bequeath “capability.” I spit out something of a manifesto and finally wrote about my favorite band. We’ve obsessed over aesthetic.
Through it all, we keep returning to themes of myth, imagination, and metanarrative—the enduring skeletal constructs wrapped in the stories we tell and participate in. I wrote a year ago: “We are story-bound, meaning-seeking people. And that is what this substack is about: making stories and seeking meaning.”
Every post is a journey—from the spark of an idea or question to a few days of research and collecting notes, then on to drafting, writing, re-writing, editing, publishing. But it’s all in service of exploring the larger stories and longer journeys we’re part of.
changes
There’s been a few changes around the site...
The About page has been dealt a revision: seemed appropriate now that I know more of what this substack is about.
And the home page has also been upgraded. I didn’t think there’d be this much content this fast, and I recognize that everything here doesn’t appeal to everyone equally. So I want to show more stuff up front to help you (and new readers) find more of what you love to read.
Speaking of what you love to read…
what’s next?
There’s a board on my Notion account2 containing thirteen pages, each one dedicated to an idea that might eventually turn into a post. But what do you think? Out of some of those ideas, what’s the most intriguing to explore in this space?
If there’s something else you want to explore, let me know in the comments.
On average, there’s been three posts a month this past year. For the next couple seasons, I’m committing to two, partly because of school and work and other creative projects demanding more attention.
In the meantime…
pls share + subscribe
The only thing that makes examining stories better is getting to do it with really cool people like you. If you know other cool people, invite them to be a secret keeper today…
(By the way, being a secret keeper isn’t about keeping the secret from other people. It’s about being a good steward of a special thing. But that’s a whole other post! 🙈)
anyways…
These five posts got the most people reading and sharing. 🙂
This journey has been such a joy. I’m grateful you’re along for the ride, and I can’t wait to keep exploring stories and seeking meaning in this space.
Thanks again, Katy!
You’re welcome 😉 we’ll compare experiences next HMUK