write like you're a local grocery store

it's *your* content, sourced organic (?) and local. who cares who else is saying it?

Yum. I love grocery stores.

There’s so much good shit there. Get me some of those Trader Joe’s pretzel twists with M&Ms that they try to call candy-covered chocolate. Bring me some of the best prime rib only H-Mart could offer me. Jars of kimchi? Another vat of yogurt I’ll probably let expire but gives me temporary satisfaction for 3 days anyway? Hell yeah! This week is brussels sprouts, a departure from how last week I gorged myself on microwaveable Tikka Masala. Frozen fruit takes the cake over fresh fruit this month, but oh yes more discount chocolate cake please…

Every time I stand in line at the checkout line with a bunch of other people around me ready to spend my weekly $50+, I’m struck with this thought. There are millions of people around the country — no, the world — who are doing the same, but not here. They are standing next to me in the astral realm, forming parallel lines, but not here. They can’t bring themselves to always get takeout. They need to sustain themselves. And whether you end up wasting your haul [more on this some other time…], you still go out there and buy you some food.

And not everyone is crowding one store. They’re spaced somewhat evenly around the country, so they can provide for everyone.

Chances are, you’re not driving 30 miles out to a Von’s a town over to get your much-needed broccoli or a new 25 lb bag of rice. You are doing this locally. There are enough distributors of food, or we’d all starve. You are doing this right next to where you live, or going to a store that’s a little bigger than the one you usually go to, sure. Imagine if everyone was at the only Safeway for miles around. That store would be fucked, tbh.

You might have slight preferences, like Food Bazaar won’t cut it for certain snacks but might for others. And Whole Foods is too bougie for one kind of thing, but maybe Ralph’s is enough. But in any case, you’re at a trusted place. You have no real urge to go way further than you have to.

This concept is how I deal with my massive comparisonitis these days. This is how I am going to justify writing even though I don’t think anyone will want to read it because they’ve seen it before.

This is what I will tell myself now and forever:

I’m a fucking local grocery store.

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I’m the place next door where you will get your chicken breast/productivity tips. I will not think about how I wish I were as popular as James Clear, which would be like me worrying too hard about whether people like the other store 40 miles away from me more than the one I run.

Wow Crystal, are you saying that originality doesn’t matter then, critics scoff.

Yes! It matters in some regards.

You need to be decent quality enough, and unique enough, to have a customer base that will pick you over the one next door that’s identical. If there were two Whole Foods next to each other, sure, we’d have a problem. If you just rip off all of Malcolm Gladwell’s writing, yeah someone’s bound to notice.

But if you’re similar-ish to him because Malcolm Gladwell is a major influence of yours, it doesn’t matter that much because people may end up stumbling upon you over Malcolm. Or see the differentiation, the small nuances, and like you better for some reason. Or honestly, not give a shit because they don’t have time to read stuff until they find Gladwell. Be the person to distribute your version of an idea, without overthinking if it’s the highest quality or the only version of one product etc.

The localization is the point here. The eternal dilemma of the “content creator”-writer in today’s age is your ideas feel unoriginal. Worse, you might think they are unique, til you Google around and find someone actually did already talk about the thing you want to talk about.

And this writeup is to help whoever wants to get out of this spiral. Whoever wants to not feel shitty and replaceable anymore. I’m telling you: lean out of fearing being unoriginal. Lean instead into being local.

Don’t mistake the market need for content as any less than it is. Lots of people need help, lots of people need inspiration, and lots of people don’t have enough of it. We get hungry daily and need more food than ever as a society — why not view ideas as the same?

If the ideas marketplace is a term, then remember that “knowledge stuff” is a consumable good that needs to be distributed to the public, and there’s more of a shortage of it than we realize. For every new person who’s reading a lot online, there needs to be twice as many producers.

I’m arguing that originality matters less than we think, even if it obviously still matters. Strive for individuality without letting the pressure make you buckle. When the pressure does make you wince, remember your burden is to provide those close to you with what they seek. Don’t make them go further to find it.

I will tell you the things I’m learning, the experiences I’ve had, without wondering if I’m just some speck out there. From a bird’s eye view, the universe doesn’t give a shit about a small microscopic dot like me on Earth. But if you look at me from the point of view from smol human to smol human, I seem more accessible, bigger, more relevant. it’s all a matter of perspective.

I’m here to tell you something, possibly first, or second in an original way. Even if someone else was a distributor that gave me that idea, I will be the source closest to you.

I’m your local deli that gives you that slightly shitty bacon egg sandwich even if I’m not the most high art luxurious New Yorker content. I have a job — and my job is to tell you things that might help you. My job is to feed you, for you are always hungry readers, and you’re not trying to eat the same shit every day [like come on, you can’t be codependent on everything Anne Helen Petersen or Venkatesh Rao writes only, you have to find someone else once in a while].

I don’t have to be so popular to deliver sustenance to the people who will read ME, and not someone else. I can tweet something popular that pathetically echoes another tweet with my own spin on it, and maybe 5 people who didn’t see it will think it’s original.

It’s cringe to plagiarize. It’s not cringe to remember you have a select circle that has not exposed themselves to your sources of information. Go forth now and say what you want to your heart’s content. Instead of obsessing over being original, why not realize you have a more important role: being a partner in this world of helping one another?

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To every writer suffering massive discontent: I’m sorry, but you have to face the reality that you are unoriginal. We all are! You’ve probably read something like this before already. I don’t even know why you plan on still reading! [but thank you for continuing anyway uwu]

The Internet has made the spread of information sinisterly fast, and now you can find out instantly that someone beat you to saying something maybe even DECADES ago. And they’re clearly more popular than you.

You cannot be Online without being scared these days that you are smol and insignificant. It’d be actually critically disturbing if you didn’t. If that’s the case, have you no consciousness? Is your ego so massively at peace that you exist in a perfect bubble, immune to the influences outside you, with nothing compelling you to exist publicly? [See my piece on plausible deniability]

Many will say, noooo I don’t have this insecurity. I produce for my own sick satisfaction, Crystal, I PROMISE! You’re wrong! And some of you will say, ahaha, I relate, I’ll keep reading I guess.

The many of you who say you don’t have this insecurity are wrong.

Give up now, your monkey usually mind whispers to you. Lord forbid we all be cliches. You have to be original! It’s the way of Western exceptionalism! If you don’t — you suck. Your loved ones can replace you! You’re replaceable! GAAAAH —

But maybe you’ll feel different now. Or maybe you won’t. Darn, maybe I should’ve done one slightly differently worded phrase to convince you. Maybe you could’ve written this very thing yourself. Whoops!

Or maybe this helped. Maybe this mattered. Maybe this was the one corner store that had eggnog on a snowy Christmas Eve, when all the other shops were closed, and I saved you a great deal of effort otherwise. I’ll never know!

In case the latter is true, and you are one of the bunch aspiring to write something and have had these thoughts stop you…

If you are strapped for ideas on how to articulate the thing you want to, but feel stupid emulating someone else…

If you frequently give up, or have your unconscious block the shit out of your ideas because you fear people will think it’s bad, not get it, or worse — have already read something about this before…

This is for you.

Even if no one else admits to it, I will. It haunts me at times. I used to feel like a total fraud. And at risk of seeming like a masochist, I decided to work at an organization now where it’s my daily duty to talk to the best minds on the Internet. And I’ll be shook that so many things I tell people are already out there. Oh my god it makes me never want to speak again at times. And of course, being on Twitter after 3 years hiding away extra-illuminated this.

The bad news: someone already probably thought of the thing you want to write about. Worse, they probably did it “better” by your standards.

Why put any effort into writing then? Why?

Good news: I get to have one conversation with one person who needed that eggnog. If I wasn’t open for business, they wouldn’t have benefitted.

If I didn’t care about my local, small-time duties, I’d be letting down the people that can’t be bothered to go to the most luxurious place on the other side of the state.

I’ll be a humble, little place then. I’ll do it for those who matter.