I suck at Writing Satire at 2 A.M.

On some random Thursday night last week, at 1:30am-ish, my wife felt a big ass spider crawling on her face, grabbed it, threw it somewhere, and woke up the whole house with her grotesque scream.

Me being a devoted husband and brave father reluctantly volunteered myself to take on the task of seeking and destroying that giant spider that made my wife wail before it came back in the pitch of darkness to crawl on my face for revenge.

And lo and behold, I came up with a fabulous plan.

As I skimmed through her giant profile, I made myself study her craft. Dissecting, cutting, and meandering through numerous posts and Notes, I realized something. This lady had numerous Notes going back further in history than my existential existence on Substack, but for a second, my brain was puzzled.

Why did her Notes get so much reach and traction?

And then it clicked... She was posting the same goddam Note every other day with different wording... But it wasn’t the fact that they were the same Note.

She willingly was putting herself in a vulnerable situation. And putting herself out there for the world to see and slam her with 4509 likes, 2069 articles. And 2175 replies a month just so she could grow.

And at that moment, I realized I was no different than her. She was a mother who also had Instagram-themed selfies, and I was a father of 3 sons that could also get in front of the camera and take cinematic selfies of my face if the world ever asked that of me.

As I reread these lines for a second… time stopped and my heart stopped beating.

And I was brought to tears at the pain and suffering of those who came before me on Substack, and those coming out of the shadows to send their articles to me to examine and read with care. And then restack this Note to help me help others like them.

I knew the goals were lofty, and the ambitions were high, and that hill looked very steep.

But how does one know if they can’t climb a hill without falling from it?

So I sat for a minute looking at the screen on my phone and hoping that giant spider found solace in another person’s face, and I decided it was time to send that Note.

Send it off with love.
Send it off into the universe of Substack.
Send it off into the void that everyone on Substack calls Notes.

And hope with earnesty it reaches the people in darkness who need it most tonight, and tomorrow, next month, and till the end of 2028.

But before all of this, I debated if I should lower the broad subscriber count to 19,999 instead of 20,000, because it looks a lot smaller, but I was just so exhausted and wanted to get ready to focus on helping the Substack communities tomorrow help me…

So I closed Substack… smiled at the dark ceiling and closed my eyes.

Ten minutes later I opened up my phone and my eyes to check if my Note had reached into the hearts of any Substacker in need yet.

And yes, it did… One important person. We will call her by a fake name, Eve, to keep her in the shadows and protected.

Eve’s background was one I am not quite sure of yet, but she came prepared as if she was answering the calling from the universe.

As I opened up her notes to read, I noticed she had done what I had asked.

She had delivered me an article that she took time and sweat to write.

And I saw myself smiling to myself, and then as I scrolled down I noticed she sent me not one, not two, but eleven more bastions of her life articles.

So I quietly sat back and wrote a reply to her. I wanted her to know I was here and I was ready to aid her in aiding me, but I couldn’t hold the weight of eleven articles at this time of the night in my life.

So I offered the gift of me volunteering to go to her profile, and picking the shortest one for me to read that cost me the least amount of time, and I would fight that one battle valiantly tonight.

And somehow… it brought me back to Sam’s note that has stayed with me since that one day I stared at my subscriber count in dismay and looked to the sky and asked.

Who am I writing for?
What am I writing for?
And does all of this even matter?

It affected me so much I wrote an article about him leaving Substack, and somehow the Void answered me and Sam returned a week later to reply to me.

So out of her twelve beautiful articles I picked a beautiful poem… in which she somehow described in crazy structure, and wording, why she does not want to physically really hurt herself.

I quickly finished this poem and got emotional with all of these thoughts running in my mind, and told her to restack my main note so it can reach more people like her who needed me.

And I took on the endeavor of getting some much-needed rest for the big day tomorrow… and decided it was time to go to sleep at 3 a.m.

I went to sleep that night and snored heavily… hoping it would protect me from that giant arachnid stalking in the darkness, and believing the experiment was over after the work I had done with Eve.

But little did I know, when I woke up the next day, people would be trying to hand me their children, their plants, their cats, and enough articles to open a public library.

It has only just now begun….