Here, I’ll call myself Lou Hughesele (LOO HEW-zih-LEH), Lou the Little Child of Fire, Lou the diasporist Jew descended from Appalachians of Irish ancestry, Lou the silly little guy who ponders the divine, the mundane, the esoteric, the profane, the metaphysical, the frivolous, and the foolish.
Here, I’m exploring what it looks like to take my own thoughts and ideas seriously, to not make fun of myself and shut myself down before anyone else gets the chance. Or to shut myself down with, “What do I have to say that hasn’t already been said?” when the answer for anyone is, “Nothing.” Here, I’m putting an end to saying, “If I ever go back for a PhD, I’ll write about this…,” because I believe deeply that we don’t need the backing of an institution in order for us to matter. Here, I am trying to apply my values towards myself. Here, I’m trying to heal the part of myself that is preemptively embarrassed, that doesn’t believe my ideas are really worth something.
Here, I’m tapping back into beloved hobbies from adolescence: creating analog and digital spaces for my self-expression through zines and blogs. Spending hours cutting and pasting physical objects, researching and writing until my thoughts became fully formed on the page. Editing a profile to mark for myself how my tastes evolve, practicing HTML for no good reason. I miss distributing zines. I miss my Xanga, my MySpace, my Tumblr. I miss when we all had a corner of the world that was just ours, as much as it could be. Here, I’m trying to build that again, as much as I can.
Thanks for being here. Now, go do it yourself.
Lou Hughesele 