Help! I Am Running Out of Ideas!

From Paris back to Brooklyn with new habits and new ideas.

Bonjour From Brooklyn,

I am sitting at my desk in my apartment. It is going to be my new French cafe going forward and I am going to have to take my own coffee orders,

‘Cafe allongé merci.’

Thankfully I have a great espresso machine for such important matters.

I am writing this to publish something, ANYTHING, any writing at all, today here in my apartment. I need to break the mental spell that the habit I got into of writing every day in a cafe in Paris is not something magical but was just that, a habit. Granted, a habit that was formed in the most beautiful city in the world. But a habit I would like to continue at home in Brooklyn AND…wherever I end up spending my time in the future.

I will have much more to say and to write over the next weeks and months and years and I just wanted to say to you who have already subscribed or read any piece I have written over the past 3 months an enthusiastic and sincere thank YOU.

I am not sure why typing at a computer and pressing publish grew to be way scarier than getting on stage and telling jokes for 6o minutes but it occupied a really really large part of my brain, especially when I was sharing something a little scary or personal. Well, last week I published my ‘scariest’ and ‘most personal’ piece yet. It was about porn and loneliness and I tried to make it funny and entertaining but I knew that there was only so much humour I could extract from the subject before it would distract from what I wanted to say. I wanted to put like 50 preambles on it but just decided to put a little preamble on it and press publish. The response was really overwhelming, I got many texts, many emails from men and women ages 24-65 who relate, who have their own stories and added their own perspectives. It was confirmation of a tiny inkling of a thought I had in my mind that was

‘People will relate to this.’

And it proved wrong the other much larger thought

‘This is too personal, maybe don’t share this one.’

Now listen, not everything on here is going to be my most intimate thoughts and stories and struggles, geesh! I gotta keep some cards close to the vest! Leave a little mystery! BUT…When I was sitting at this desk in Brooklyn 3 months ago I thought, what if I run out of ideas, what if no one reads this and what if I write something that is embarrassing? Now, I am sitting here knowing that those are all legitimate fears but they have been proven to be wrong.

Here are a few excerpts of messages I received in the past week in response to my piece ‘My Favourite Porn’, the first two are from women and the 3rd is from a guy. Let’s see if we can tell the difference between male and female communication styles!

‘Just read your essay. Incredible. I commend your honesty and openness’

‘This was really beautiful Kevin - I resonated with so much of what you had to say about loneliness and avoiding the ever-present urge to numb out.’

and the guy…

‘This was a really good read brah’

Thanks brah! Glad you found the piece to be LIT AF.

This is a message I received from a longtime friend who I haven’t spoken to in a few years. She is someone who is quite wise and I respect immensely.

‘Hey Kevin, I’ve been listening to your substack channel and enjoying it. I just listened to My Favourite Porn (just realised the British spelling haha). Wow. I really appreciate you taking the risks you took in telling that story. I need two hands to count the number of friends marriages that have been deeply affected by misguided and desperate attempts of spouses looking for a cure for what ails them in sexual content/encounters (sometimes porn adjacent if you will). Thank you. You tap into something very real about the human condition and that is not something that is not easily come by.

This message just blew me away because if you told me 3 months ago I would write something that someone would say ‘taps into the human condition’ I would say, mission accomplished, YOU ARE A WRITER!!!! And yet…it was the piece I was most fearful and reluctant to share, I think there is a connection between those two.

So…one more sincere thank you to anyone who has read, liked, subscribed, commented emailed or messaged me. It is what is making me excited to publish my next piece, half of it written in a cafe in Paris and half of it written in my apartment in Brooklyn.

Also…if you have not read last weeks piece…I am going to put the last few paragraphs and 4 minutes here. I would love for you to check the entire thing out. But it is 30 minutes long and a little graphic. And if you want the denouement of the piece, I think it’s the most important part and it may give you some tools and perspective to help you with something you might be struggling with. So…enjoy!

FINAL 5 MINUTES OF AUDIO FROM LAST WEEKS PORN PIECE! ENJOY!

And if you have read or listened to it, stay tuned for my next piece which will be out on Monday morning.

The Moral of the Story: There is no such thing as running out of ideas.

My desk in Brooklyn where I will continue writing every week.