106. tuck and roll

Me to Me: “Do you think anyone would actually notice if we just left?”

Me (responding): “There’s only one way to find out.”

It was a conversation they’d had many times before, and one they (read: me-we) were - quite frankly - sick of. So without further discussion, they grabbed their bag, didn’t say goodbye to a single soul, then turned and walked out the door.

Back in my big-drinking years (the champagne and cocaine era), I mastered the art of the tuck and roll. This is my personal expression for what some folks refer to as an ‘Irish exit’ - slipping quietly from the party without telling anyone you’re leaving, because you’re exhausted, too fucked up to keep partying, or just don’t want to be in the environment anymore.

Some call it an Irish goodbye, French leave, or ghosting. I call it the tuck and roll and it has always felt to me like what Sonic the Hedgehog did in the video games of my childhood. When he needed to move fast, he just curled up in a little ball, spikes out, and zoomed on his merry way. He’s a blur, you can’t even see him, he’s here one minute and then - poof! Zoom! He’s gone.

If you’ve been here a minute, you know that I haven’t (been here for a minute, that is.) I laughed when I opened the folder which houses my drafts for this museletter and found that my last draft was entitled “Relapse.” 

That was July 2, 2025. I’m not even sure if I posted it. It would have been six months after embarking on my anti-social social club adventure, three months after throwing in the towel and (intentionally, but still relapse-y) showing back up on Instagram, and two months before I’d go quiet again, because my voice just doesn’t WANT to speak in that space of noise. 

I’m not going to belabor the point about leaving Instagram, or sniff around for external validation about deleting my Facebook account. I’m not going to climb up on my soapbox, stroke my own ego or feed the beast of my self-righteousness by harping on about the ethical, political, social, and psychospiritual harms of the machine. You know them, I know them, or we at least have some sense of them, and the fact is for some people it seems social media is great. It pays their bills, provides the dope(amine) hits they need to keep making it through the new weird of each day, and keeps them connected to people they love and those they don’t give a fruit loop about in real life. 

But I’ve been feeling lately like the “will I, won’t I” dance with Instagram has been like a drunk trying to give up the drink. I spend more time thinking about what I’ll post, how I’ll post, when I’ll post than actually doing any creating or posting, and once I find myself in the scroll-space, a fugue state comes over me and I can’t remember why I’m there, what I’m doing, or what it was I wanted to say that felt important enough to try to speak it in a field of ten million people.

Ten million people shouting at the same time, amongst countless peddlers hawking their wares, amidst street preachers spitballing hellfire, doom and gloom to the person next to them, who is in the midst of an earnest explanation of her seven step skincare routine for dewy, ageless radiance. All through the crowd, troll-bots, gremlins, and now AI-people vie for attention and the shillings of shaves and shares.

It’s no wonder I can’t remember what I was going to say. How can anyone think with all that noise? How can anything of substance travel from one heart to another when it’s an endless barrage of opinions, uncited sources, neuro-torts and tantalizing promises of the life that could be if only I… 

What was I saying again? 

Oh yeah. I didn’t like the party, and I left. 

Over the spring, when I was writing consistently (here, me to me, me to you, me to us), I got emails back every week from REAL PEOPLE I LOVE (and / or have never even met), sharing with me how these words - long form, uncensored, grammatically incorrect, written without a whisper of ChatGPT - were speaking to their souls. 

Talk about a dopamine hit. 

Fuck short form content, I’ve got Mercury in Scorpio: 

I want to climb down to the bottom of the well where we share secrets and root around in the shadowy nether regions of our souls to excavate the gold in the shadow. 

I want to write each other love letters about the brilliant ways we’re navigating the crooked path of our calling during this ridiculous incarnation, and laugh about why we ever thought coming to Earth in the 21st century would be cool. Our cosmic selves are so silly, they give no fucks about anything but the grand lesson of Love, and they just keep coming back. 

I want to read your replies, full of stunning synchronicities, and be regaled with tales of where we met in our dreams last night, then write back and conspire together on testing the ‘new research’ (ha, we’ve known it forever) that communication is possible through lucid dreams. 

I want to feel my fingers slow down on the keyboard as the story of the day and song of my heart moves through its descending arc, final interlude, and quieting outro. 

I want to feel. Not the numbness and haze of the scroll, but the savory, chewy, tangy, salty, bitter taste of these words on my tongue. 

I want to feel. Not the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fleeting satisfaction of an emoji comment, but the warm honey of grateful connection that brings pinpricks of tears to my eyes in something as slow as a fucking email.

Is it too much to ask to slow down to the pace of email? What if we really are moving towards a post-industrial, post-digital age? What if the grid really does go down? Will we remember how to think when we can no longer google the answers? 

Alright, alright, cool your jets. You love to write, I get it. So write. Do this thing instead of that thing. Do your thing, whatever that is. You said no soapbox, so chill out, because you don’t have to convince anyone, don’t have to defend your decision, don’t have to do anything, actually, except get your gears going and get back on the rails of your experiment in creativity and human connection. 

You’ve thought about writing this post for 104 days. You wrote for 104 days, you stopped for 104 days (weird, didn’t even plan that - WHAT DOES IT MEAN?) 

So write. Show up and tell the truth. There is no wrong way. Do it now. Try easy. There are no big decisions and you’ll never be ready. Start willing. 

Yes, I am willing. 

So let’s begin… again.