Consider This Your Invitation

Friend -

I need to tell you where I’ve gone.

Not far. Not away from you. Just…elsewhere. I’ve begun writing on Substack and I want to tell you why, because the why matters more than the announcement.

the name of my Substack is “Middle Kindling”

For years I’ve fed my best words into the same machine everyone else feeds their words into. I have posted a beautiful thought and watched it flatten under an algorithm that rewards imitation over honesty.

Social media has gotten loud and strangely lonely at the same time. So many are performing friendship, or performing creativity, with few practicing authentic, free friendship and unique art.

Here’s the part no one warns you about until it happens to you: it isn’t just noisy. It’s full of ghosts. I have watched my own words, thoughts I sat with, prayed over, lived into, and bled enough to write them, only to see them repackaged just enough and presented as someone else’s insight. Someone else’s “brand”. By someone who is able to lurk in the shadows, but never so much as leave a comment to acknowledge that you ever said a word that made one bit of difference.

That isn’t paranoia…I am not worried about any of these things, because I have lots more ideas where those came from. It’s just what the social media platforms were built to allow. Everything you make over there is a paper fire, bright for a moment. But gone before it warms anyone, and it is never really yours to protect.

So I have, wisely, moved the real work, the slow work, the theology, the art, the essays I actually mean…

…to Substack.

It’s mine there, and I am happy to share it with you. It sits in an archive instead of a feed. Nobody’s algorithm decides who can see it, and no one can quietly claim it as their own. It’s a bit of a firewall, honestly, and it lets the beautiful act of energy exchange happen.

You can always subscribe for free. Most of my posts on Middle Kindling are free. But you can also subscribe for a small amount in exchange for allll the energy I lavish into more premium content.

Living there, is something I’m calling “Middle Kindling” - a monthly letter about the small, seemingly unremarkable, dry-and-ready things that can become a beautiful fire.

Books. Art. Colors. A question I am living into. Nothing polished. Nothing that is intended to present myself as having a life “more well-traveled and curated than yours”.

It’s more like a letter to a friend.

And if you’ve read this far, you’re exactly who I am writing it for.

Come subscribe.‍ ‍Escape the cold paper-fires of social media with me, and let’s build something that actually nourishes us both.

One small, true thing at a time.

With Love,

Sheila