About It’s Not Us
It’s Not Us explores the relationship between personal and systemic challenges. How do we address the difficulties in our lives, and do our best to improve our circumstances, while also understanding the larger forces that often stand in our way? How do we gather communal power in a highly individualistic society? How do we separate what we can control from what we probably can’t?
What made you decide to start this?
I wrote self-help stories for consumer magazines for many years. I earned a good living, interviewed fascinating people, and discovered that many of the tips and tricks I learned improved my own life. But my assignments never tasked me with addressing the systemic challenges that so often impede our progress. In the world of shiny magazines, individual choices were the only thing that mattered.
I believe this view is not only inaccurate, it actually impedes our progress. We have to know what we are up against. We have to be able to recognize when our problems are not our fault, or at least not entirely our fault. My book, It’s Not You, decodes all the harsh and wildly unhelpful feedback people get while searching for a romantic partner. In this newsletter, I’ll take on the many other demoralizing messages we get about:
Why we can’t concentrate
Why we can’t lose weight
Why we can’t save money
Why we can’t sleep
And much more!
The point is not to give up because the fix is in. It’s to arm ourselves with accurate information so that we can better understand our adversaries and move forward. It’s to liberate ourselves from self-blame and navigate our increasingly complex and chaotic world. I want to explore all this because…I need it, and I’m betting that I’m not the only one.
What does it cost?
Right now, this newsletter is free, but to keep this project sustainable I’ll need to start charging for at least some of the content at some point. If you find this newsletter useful, I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Do you accept submissions from writers?
Yes!
I'm interested in publishing personal essays about the ways individuals confront systemic problems—and the ways they navigate the line between what they can control (such as calming the mind through meditation) and what they can't (a world where distracting technology is entrenched in our daily lives). Looking for essays that explore these ideas in relation to food, health, money, work, relationships, family – you know, everything!
Do you pay?
Yes!
$100 for original essays—700 to 2,000 words.
$100 for interviews—up to 2,000 words.
$25 for reprints.
$50 for questionnaires.
What else do I need to know?
Reach: My quickly growing mailing list currently has more than 2,400 subscribers, and each post gets from 1,800 to 3,000 views.
Rights: All yours!
Contact: Email me at saraeckeledits [at] gmail [dot] com and write “It's Not Us submission” in the subject line.
Some essays I’ve published recently:
How Success Made Me Question My Worth. By Caitlin Dixon.
Crybaby For Life. By Alyson Pomerantz
I Dated a Vegan. By Maura Kelly.
Questionnaires are brand new! Guidelines are here.
You mentioned an advice column. What’s the deal with that?
Shortly after I published It’s Not You, I started an advice column on my blog (you’ll have to scroll down a bit to get to that part). It helped me think about the different challenges of being single as they relate to people’s actual lives, and it was nice to apply my research in this personal way. So I plan to revive that in this newsletter. If you send me a question to be answered in this newsletter, please tell me how you’d like to be identified — first name, first initial, etc. I don’t pay for questions, but will do my best to provide a valuable answer!
