This Is How The Sausage Gets Made Here At Cappuccino

Glamorous? No. Probably not even interesting. But folks have been asking.

In my thirty-plus years as a professional writer, few things have given me greater joy than being able to speak directly to you on this platform. You are a remarkable bunch, whip-smart and thoughtful. Reading your comments inspires me, gives me hope, and makes me feel not so alone on this planet. Thank you.

But I didn’t know you were there until I started writing, and you didn’t know I was here until you started reading. For that alone, I am grateful to have a forum like Substack, which has brought us together.

By the time I started Cappuccino in late April, 2021, the way people were consuming media had already undergone a sea change. The pandemic had driven us online in greater numbers, even readers who preferred the reassuring heft of a good book. We transitioned to reading on backlit screens out of necessary and then stayed for the convenience.

Now, I consume all my news online, and I’m willing to bet you do, too. Having said that, I miss real-world newspapers. The smell of ink on newsprint is practically an intoxicant. Combine that with the smoky aroma of a good dark roast coffee and your morning paper is about as close to heaven as you’re going to get.

Online publications have no smell. It’s my only criticism. For human bloodhounds like myself who live by their olfactory senses, it’s just another strange casualty of the virtual world we now inhabit.

It’s way too clean in here.

Fortunately, I have a meme for that. From Buffy the Vampire Slayer, no less. You’ll enjoy it.

So, we’ll have to make do with our non-contextual, un-smelly Substack publication. I’ve always considered it a virtue to gnaw the bone that has fallen to our lot. Let this one be our gently gnawed bone.

No writer goes to the trouble of publishing four times a week unless she has an agenda. Here’s mine.

I strongly feel that social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are on their way out. Already, Facebook is seen by young people as a graveyard where old-heads go to die. Only 23.6% of its user demographic is in the 25-to-34-year-old range. Teens wouldn’t get on Facebook if you paid them. Meta (née Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg knows it. That’s why he’s sinking billions into his tiresome little Metaverse project.

The way I see it, replacing social media platforms like Facebook will be smaller but no less mighty social media platforms like those found on Substack: multiple publications attracting multiple tribes.

The reason I believe that is because it’s already happening at Cappuccino. You are part of it. We are our own much healthier, non-corporatist, non-algorithmic, ad-free social media platform. This is a million times better than anything Meta can offer, except perhaps 25 blurry photos of your Aunt Gladys sipping her second box car at the Cracker Barrel.

Just for the record: you’re not here for me; I’m here for you. You are the reason I stay up all night writing. It’s lovely having this direct communication with you, and all I want to do is keep it going and growing. Call it a compulsion. Call it love.

Cappuccino never feels like work to me, even though it is. Each article takes me hours to write. It is not uncommon for me to research, compile notes, and write from 3:00PM to 7:00AM, Monday through Thursday. When the world is just beginning to stir, I’m usually dragging myself to bed. This is not without its difficulties.

Here’s what I see every morning as I’m getting ready for bed.

Most nights—or mornings, if you will—my brain feels like a squirrel caught under a car tire. That feeling increases exponentially when I have other work to do, work that almost-but-never-quite seems to pay the rent. Then I’m a zombie who goes for days without setting foot outside the house. I don’t like that, actually. But it’s the sacrifice a writer makes: solitude, delayed gratification, and what I refer to as “genteel poverty.” That’s what I’m calling it anyway.

I take the work very seriously. What I aspire to offer you is exactly what my byline says: Thoughtful Entertainment. I want to give you something you can’t get anywhere else. I’ve had a strange, wonderful life so far. Few people have seen the things I’ve seen (which is probably a blessing). What I can give you then is a unique perspective and maybe a few tiny pieces of my brain.

You like brains, right?

I love it when the whole world is asleep, except for me. Bunny doesn’t count. She’s always asleep.

Readers often remark on the range of subjects I cover here on Cappuccino. I confess to being intellectually promiscuous. I find many things fascinating, but restrict myself to only writing about the things that galvanize me emotionally. If it pings, I sings. If it don’t, forget it.

In the beginning, coming up with four ideas for four different articles per week was hard. But like a muscle you work at the gym, this muscle gets stronger, too. I keep a running list of topic ideas, but most Mondays I just launch into whatever is uppermost on my mind that day. I try not to write exclusively or even primarily on topics I think will go viral. Trying to guess “what people want” is the surest way to make myself miserable. On the other hand, writing about things that are too niche, too esoteric, or have no public value don’t interest me either. Cappuccino is foremost a dialogue, not a diatribe.

Like most cynics, I am a disappointed idealist. I want the world to be a better place—not for me, but for everybody. This will never happen. The ghost in the machine, the flaw in the design, is us. But in that crazy slipstream between the world we need and the world we appear to be incapable of creating, a vast array of subject matter is made available to a girl like me. I intend to mine it as long as I can, and then tell you about what I find.

It’s almost 6AM here in Italy as I write to you. Our apartment in this sixteenth-century palazzo is quiet. The guts of my computer are gently whirring; on the table beside me, a cup of ginger tea with milk and honey sends up fragrant drifts of steam. Bunny sleeps in the chair across; Olive on my feet under the blanket; John in the bedroom. And through my window, another haunted night grows lighter.

Were I to open that window, I would see Amelia Cathedral looming from the top of the hill. For hundreds of years, it has stood there. Other eyes than mine have beheld it. Other hearts than mine have yearned toward it in the soft blue dawn. It will be here long after I am gone, and I take great comfort in that.

Amelia Cathedral at dawn.

I enjoy reporting to you: Transmissions from Italy. I do this for the love. Not yours for me, but mine for you. I do this because I don’t know any other way. If no one on this planet could read or even wanted to, I would still write to you. “Find what you love and let it kill you,” the great poet, Bukowski, wrote. Here then is my cold dead valentine.

One of the most satisfying things about writing Cappuccino is that I have no corporate overlords to satisfy, no advertisers to placate, no reason to lie. Last week, I read through about five schmaltzy Italy-expat-tourist ezines and had to roll my eyes. Those people weren’t telling the truth. They had an agenda—and the agenda was getting you to buy into their dream. Or their product. Or their show.

That’s not what you need. You need feet on the ground and a clear view. You need newsletters written by people who aren’t narcissists, egomaniacs, or magazine publishers. You need the Truth, capital T, no bullshit, no embellishment.

That’s why I started this publication. And it’s my sincere hope that you will share Cappuccino, but only with the right people. Only with the people you know who belong here.

Consider Cappuccino the anti-Facebook, the anti-Twitter, the anti-monetized-attention of any kind. We’re just having a conversation. Pull up a chair. Take a load off.

And please know I’m so glad you’re here.

Copyright © 2022 Stacey Eskelin

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