I am not a brand.

Allow me to introduce myself

I recall a casual conversation I had with an acquaintance I met while I was visiting a friend. It was 2020, right before social distancing and work from home orders. While wandering around the blue ether of the Georgia Aquarium, somehow the topic of my platform came up in conversation.

I explained to him that I had a Youtube channel I shared my numerology practice on, and a Facebook page for other forms of media, mentioning how my platform was on consciousness and I was writing a sci-fi fantasy novel about the journey of the soul.

“Sounds like you’re developing your brand.”

Brand?! God, no.

“No, not really…”

I struggled to figure out how to explain that reducing my work to something to sell would defeat the whole purpose.

“I’m writing a book because I think it should exist. I like to share my insights with the hope that it helps in small ways. I am not a brand.”

In retrospect, this was a person who couldn’t comprehend doing something for the sake of making something exist without the precedent of establishing a cash cow. A typical “trust fund baby” stereotype concerned with the price of everything and the value of nothing. He is not an abomination, unfortunately, this is simply the standard we are all held to.

I’m doing it all wrong. My posts cover a broad subject matter and theme - sometimes it’s fiction, sometimes it’s a children’s book review, sometimes it’s numerology, sometimes it’s me battling with the human experience, sometimes it’s a poem, or a journal entry on something that I was compelled to talk about. Im failing at mastering SEO descriptions, and at creating content that would perfectly align with said descriptions. I am failing at writing for the market, and my monetization and subscriber count does suffer from it.

More on that here:

Despite this, I stand by my approach to my work. I stand by it while I’m unemployed, while being closer to homelessness than home ownership with or without a full time job. I stand by this after 2k job applications in Natural Resource Management over the course of 9 years, having graduated in a collapsing country in a failing paradigm (seems like more of an important time to write about things like consciousness, justice, spirituality, nature, philosophy, and the universe more than ever, no?).

Art of all kinds is essential. Art is most powerful when it is a mirror. My people are out there… somewhere. They do not fit into a neat demographic. They are all ages, genders, ethnicities and nationalities. Our system of categorization is limiting, stifling. It reduces us into boxes, consequently limiting what we create, and ultimately what we consume. What we consume becomes us, and so on, like the snake eating its own tail.

I could be for anyone tired of the trends and the noise of social media, where your interests must align with the market. I could be for the curious, the whimsical, the heavy-hearted that are also willing to laugh. I could be for those who come to life in summer afternoons filled with effervescent wine, conversations about what we hope for, what we’re afraid of, and daylight that fails to cease. I could be for the people who see the ways of the marketplace planet, and want to be a part of the movement that overcomes the mass hysteria of said planet.

I’m not good at this sort of thing, but for the first time on Metanoia, allow me to make an attempt at formally introducing myself.

Hello,

My name is Kerry.

On Substack, I am a human that writes things to share with other humans, usually the oddball soulful kind.

I have an active imagination and a philosophical nature. I’m haunted by ideas and observations. I came here like this.

I am not a brand, or a product (sorry).

My life is very simple.

I wake up, and survive the day.

I don’t have a whole lot to show for it, except a list of decent qualifications on a piece of paper that’s supposed to grant me access to employment, a tiny urban garden, and this publication.

I don’t have the kind of support system that many people have. I’m not a mom, or a wife, an aunt or a girlfriend. Each day I wake up, survive it, and try to make something worthwhile along the way.

It’s not sexy. It has no aesthetic, and perhaps that is hurting my presence here. I write because I don’t know how to paint, or draw. I write because I’m trying to translate my own soul to myself, and ultimately to anyone who cares to read this.

As many of you already know, I’m writing a sci-fi fantasy novel about the journey of the soul. I take you through nine lifetimes on different worlds and civilizations, eventually ending up on Earth. It starts out from a naive perspective, as many journeys do. They navigate their biology and their world of wonder, they awaken to something that spurs an unfolding. Admittedly, the first lifetime is my least favorite chapter. But most, if not all beginnings are messy, or are not told perfectly.

So be it.

My secret wish is for you to be subtlety different after coming into contact with something I’ve made, the kind of transformation that unfurls slowly, sometimes painfully, and unknowingly over time guided by your will.

It’s the kind of change that uproots malignant thoughts that warp the internal state, or that which fosters what good has already taken form, and perhaps forgotten about. It’s the kind of transformation that you don’t know is happening, and you don’t know where it came from. If done properly, you will think that the change came from you, and not some off-beat piece you stumbled upon online. It’s the catalyst that reminded you of you, and what you are not. It’s the kind of programming that has been historically used for our undoing, but this time reinstated in its opposition. The chirality of it all.

If all this sounds like something you’re on board with, welcome. Thank you for being here.

I’ll be very busy typing away here, doing it wrong. Following a muse, nature, an observation, an exploding star… following everything and nothing.

I’m very busy doing it wrong, hoping one day I stumble upon getting it right.

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Meet the Editor

Ricardo enjoys podcasts, heart chakra music, and warm things. Ricardo works up an appetite editing and coproducing Metanoia. Just one paid subscription pays for 6 weeks of crickets.