So I've Been a Year on Substack

so what?

Howdy, hola, salve, and g’day, blokes and blokesses, chaps and chapettes, ladies and gentlemen, peeps all,

This annoying blurry little brown logo I pulled off Pinterest sometime circa early January last year which I should totally change to something more representative of my publication has officially been haunting your emails for a year now.¹ If you’ve been around about that long, my condolences. May your sense of humour rest in peace under a gigantic pile of, to quote my esteemed peer, “fluff.”² What does that fluff consist of? Nobody knows, but it smells like poorly aged free verse, unfunny jokes, and impromptu speeches. My friends (does that surprise you?) are probably allergic to it.

Nevertheless, [FLUFFY ALERT] the following post is fluffed up to about 50% capacity (you think this is fluffy, it’s a good thing you didn’t read the first three triolets I wrote, and a good thing they didn’t win that contest, and a good thing that they will not be exposed to the public eye for a good while if ever). Think of one of those poofy-headed chickens. It could be a lot fluffier, sure, but it’s just fluffed in the head. That’s me, all right. Fluffed in the head.

When I started writing Ink Blots, I had just been accepted to New Saint Andrews. I was nearly eighteen.

I worked for the first six or seven months of writing, then I moved to Moscow, Idaho to begin my BA. I continued to write, at first relying mostly on my scheduled posts, taking a break for a month in the middle (October-ish) after my computer broke, then resuming writing—and boy oh boy did the steam start to come out of my ears. I was probably even making the noises. Choo—choo! Hissss.

Compared to where it was this time last year, I confidently can say that my writing has improved. My poetry has grown more structured; my prose more potent. This is in part due to the classes I’ve taken in which copious thought and concision are taught, in part due to developing a habit of sending myself quick notes when I have an idea,³ and in greatest part due to the Substackers I’ve somehow been blessed enough to befriend — Eowyn, Van Fletcher, Ruthie Biette, Giuseppe Galizia, Turner Newberg. Their critiques and encouragements keep me writing. This time last year, I’d have never imagined myself writing sonnets, nor entering a triolet contest, nor attempting a ballad or two (emphasis on attempt).

I have written and published approximately seventy posts on Ink Blots and perhaps another ten distributed between TEUTB and Bulletin Board (the dinky little slightly pointless NSA publication I run with a friend). The number of drafts I have is rather embarrassing, but at least it hasn’t hit the triple-digit mark. Yet.

Ink Blots is currently hovering, bumping up and down around 100 subscribers. I am grateful for all of you who consistently read my posts, and even gladder for those who have taken the time to share them. The publication could have grown faster, but my writing’s not worth that kind of attention at the moment, and I am very happy with the current solid little community I’ve got built around Ink Blots and the other little Christian publications on Substack.

None of the poems I’ve written are, in fact, mine. They’ve all been pilferated, snatchered, and de-uddered from some musty, mulchy, moldy, and imaginary library of utterly unknown, nonexistent, and indifferent 30th century poets. The only poem on Ink Blots that is unoriginally mine is a —111-page ballad in tetratrochaic octiambameter about a constipated platypus digesting a piece of American cheese (to prove Chesterton wrong, obviously). If you didn’t know it existed and would like to read it, here is the link.

Now, here I am, a freshman in good standing, a year later, on the verge of my nineteenth birthday, continuing to write for Ink Blots.

So much for writing. Ink Blots (and The Elephant Under The Bridge) have gobbled up a good deal of my time the past year, but there’s been other things, and dare I say more important. One cannot write well if one does not actually have a life (I suspect this is why my first seven-ish months of writing on here were rather lesser than the latter). And I’m not talking existence. Merely existing and actually living are different. Moral of the story: y’all writers, get a life. Anyhoo—here’s a nibble of what I’ve been up to (to what I’ve been up? Up to what I’ve been? Grammar. Bah).

• Attended several rugby games

• Danced a good deal

• I am, in fact, British, (though my first language is Splatglish) and I am an undercover resident of Moscow, Russia. No matter what the plane ticket said. New Saint Andrews College is actually a cover-up for a bunch of sleep-deprived nerds who are planning to take over the world, one cup of Tolkien-flavoured coffee at a time.

• I sang in a choir at New Saint Andrews Christmas Conflict concert.

• I listened to approximately 14 podcast episodes in the last 6 months (without having previous podcast experience and stubbornly refusing to do so for a long time).

• Listened to an absurd amount of music (Spotify thinks I’m 74?)

• Despite my profile picture resembling a generic white young woman afflicted with a tremendous deal of hair, I am in fact balder than a college student’s dinner plate and I am around fifty years old and chronologically singed. Despite being deliriously allergic to felines,⁴ my three-foot-wide apartment is infested with them (along with a very viral fungus we call Covid-20). This makes for a very volatile situation that could explode at the faintest touch of a hair. Good thing I don’t have any, and neither do my cats. For no reason, all my zero neighbours steer well clear of my apartment.

• I still do not like coffee. (Yes, bah humbug to you too)

• In fact, I consume tea like an elderly British lady (estimable creatures!) with amounts of honey worthy of Pooh Bear (estimable creature!)

• I have developed a fondness for climbing trees… and hugging them (because my friends don’t like to be/aren’t always around and if I can’t I get depressed).

  

• I am still currently working 24 hours a week in addition to about 40 hours of school. And yes, I have a social life. It can be done. Just don’t ask about how much I slept or et.

• Joined the NSA Catalyst newspaper.

• Developed a concerning inconsistency between British and USA spelling and between spacing once or twice after a period. Once if it’s in a paper. Twice in my Substack articles. Usually.

• Read 100-ish books (since this time-ish last year) including:

  • In The House of Tom Bombadil (C.R. Wiley)

  • The White Horse King (Benjamin Merkle)

  • The Ballad of the White Horse (G.K. Chesterton)

  • Planet Narnia (Michael Ward)

  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson)

  • The Great Divorce (C.S. Lewis)

  • The Silmarillion (J.R.R. Tolkien)

  • Ploductivity (Douglas Wilson)

  • The Faerie Queene (Edmund Spenser)

  • The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)

  • Confessions (Augustine)

  • Things of Earth (Joe Rigney)

  • The Serpent and the Serpent Slayer (Andrew David Naselli)

  • A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)

  • The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Tolstoy)

  • We Bring Pomegranates (Joffre Swait)

  • A bunch of other Wilson books, an embarrassing amount of Sanderson novels until he turned woke, and multiple rereads.

  • If you seriously want to stalk what I read or know my general opinion on the above books (because this article really doesn’t have room for a review on every single book I read, haha) my Goodreads profile is here. I’m generally fairly faithful at updating it, and I usually review all the books I read.⁵

• Killed many, many typos and discovered a love for vicious editing (okay, maybe not discovered, but definitely nourished. GIVE ME YOUR GOOGLE DOC AND WATCH IT DIE UNDER A HUNDRED CUTS.⁶

• I suspect I shall become a sheep. Or perhaps sheepish.

• Done many, many hours of janitorial work. That shall deserve a poem one of these days, perhaps.

• Rediscovered an affection for cooking and baking (bah, no I’m not going to freeze it or ship it halfway across the world. Come and get it if you want it, and hurry up or it’ll get cold).

I’d best stop there. How does one effectively review an entire year without boring another to death who has not lived the same life or along with me? I haven’t the slightest idea.

But I suppose that if I was to try to concise 2025 into a few words, I would say that most of all I am grateful. (I know the following is cheesy. Probably American cheesy too, whatever that means). The Glori writing her first few cringy articles in early 2025 could not have anticipated to adequate degree the events of the rest of 2025 (particularly those following early August). Yes, she knew that she would, Lord willing, attend NSA. Yes, she knew she would find friends. But other than that—not the slightest idea.

Providence has tuned the lines of my life in wonderful ways the past year. As I look forward to 2026, I continue to pray that the music not only does not stop, but accelerates at increasingly perfect pitch and harmony in ways that I cannot yet see—perhaps only glimpse and hope and pray for—but in all things, the Lord is sovereign, and His Providence writes a story better than any story I would write for myself—down to the smallest, most wondrous details and the craziest plot twists.

By the grace of God, I don’t plan on dying anytime soon.⁷ I’d like to, in no particular order but rather sooner than later, complete my BA at New Saint Andrews without going into debt, compete in Declamations at least once, read a great deal more of many different things (especially poetry), make it to Concert Choir eventually, deepen my friendships, acquire a ridiculously huge library, get married to a good and godly man and build a house, create a quiver (Ps. 127) abundantly filled with our love (the kind of quiver that makes people ask “are those all yours?”), travel outside of the USA if I can ever afford it, write a lot of bad poetry and then a whole lot more good poetry, keep climbing trees and falling out of a few (to remember that I’m alive), climb mountains, make my language more song than speech, and glorify God with all that I do, no matter what rocks might stub my toes, what fences might walk into me, what skies might fall on my head on the way.

Last year’s introductory post read “This is going to be a long, meandering journey. I can’t promise I know where this road is going, but part of the thrill and adventure of the journey is not quite knowing where you are headed!”

That may have been the best thing I wrote in that entire post. Now, thanks to my rhetoric teachers, I can improve it a bit.

I stand at the beginning of the beginning of this long, foggy road labelled life. I’m not getting out of this alive, so I’d better walk it well, and I’d much rather walk it with some good friends by my side. Let Ink Blots continue to be the testimonial rambling blood, sweat, tears, and scats⁸ of a glorious⁹ insanity along the way.

So, after all that ramble, here’s a cheer to one year of the spontaneously-named-but-now-I’m-stuck-with-it-but-am-I-really? publication Ink Blots. Thanks to y’all for sticking with me through the ups and downs, the bads and mediocres, the depressions and all the hopes.

God bless,
Glori (college student, janitor, wannabe poet, and certified bore)

Ecce: A Girl in A Tree

Ink Blots may receive a do-over sometime soon, name, logo, and all. Don’t be too shocked—it is the same Glori as always. But I do, if possible, intend to give this publication a new name and logo, if possible.

1. *claims my writing got better but LOOK AT THAT RUN-ON SENTENCE*

2. Newberg, Turd. Somewhere in the area of June 2025.

3. I scoffed at this for a while; however, it turns out it works.

4. CATS ARE OF THE DEVIL

5. Quality of the review varies.

6. At least a hundred.

7. This sentence is exempted from future blackmail.

8. Thank you, Eliza

9. Pun Totally Intended