I’m currently sitting before four different tabs on my laptop — a sign of my penchant for task switching. One is titled “Title Obscured - Chapter 4” and is the start to the next installment of a fanfiction I started over a year ago and that I’m barely picking back up after a tough (but also wonderful) 2024. The next tab is titled “Dark Matter Thoughts” — it relates to the fanfiction. The third is a Google search that states “how the loss of a toxic job can affect time.” Honestly, that’s related to the fanfiction also but it’s a applicable to me as well. And the last is a Substack FAQ as I learn how to work this thing.
I’ve dabbled in blogging before, having served my time on Tumblr (and how glorious those years were). I apologize to the many who read my self-important and overly sexual poetry. A few years ago I also began a horror movie blogging website that became more work than fun since I became more of a re-capper rather than truly having something to say about the work. I deleted it and started a podcast instead. That’s been deleted now also.
At 33, I have a graveyard of hobbies and an incessant desire to create.
My main reason for joining Substack was to restart that horror movie blog and make it what I really want to, rather than what I had made up in my mind what others wanted to read. But this little personal corner can be anything I make it — a place to give my thoughts on books I’m reading, astrology (no doubt), other forms of self assessment like CliftonStrengths, and other musings.
The name “Just a Devotchka” comes from previously mentioned Tumblr after I’d latched onto the word from “A Clockwork Orange.” Of course, it’s not just Nadsat (the fictional language in Burgess’ book) but also Russian for “girl.”
I don’t mean “Just a Girl” in the (below) sense:
But I’ve been calling myself “boss b*itch” for so long, and now I’m at a point in my life where I’m wary of chasing the ambition of career climbing only for it to force me into the confines of responsibilities that I have no interest in having. I don’t think. Not truly. There are many conflicted feelings here.
I’m not just a cog in the machine. I’m a writer, a mother, an individual with larger dreams than those of Fiscal Year goals and accomplishments. That to me is what “Just a Devotchka” represents.