Substack is a wonderful place. It’s a haven for in-depth creatives, thinkers, and genuine humans who believe in art and movement. I’ve had wonderful conversations on here. I’ve gone through rebrand after rebrand after rebrand. I’ve moved from one story to the next with reckless aplomb. I’ve written from places of darkness, freedom, and deeply uncomfortable honesty.

Substack helped me learn what I want from a newsletter…

And I realized that this platform doesn’t give me everything I need to make that happen.

While I’m grateful and so delighted that I found a little corner on Substack, it showed me what I’m truly looking for, and it started answering the long-standing itch I’ve felt in my soul for a long time.

So, I’m taking CUT YOUR TEETH (recently renamed, once again) to Beehiiv.

There are a few key reasons for this.

I felt that, for my last Substack article, I’ll tell you clearly and plainly as to why I’m doing this, and be frank about where I am in my journey as an artist/entrepreneur and entrepreneur/artist. (Because those two things were never separate, but their mirroring has certainly switched places, depending on the season and the day and the emotional state).

I’m not going to try and convince you to leave Substack.

I don’t think I’ve followed a single publication on here that feels like it “belongs” anywhere outside of this sphere, to be honest with you.

Personally, though, I’ve felt an uncomfortable disconnect for awhile. This disconnect has been planted in the work itself—as you can probably tell from the many directions I’ve woven for you—and in how Substack operates. It feels less like a true newsletter platform, and more like a growing full ecosystem of social media, content creation, and a publication experience that isn’t truly private.

There was something about this combination that I never really liked.

(We’ll touch on other more concrete things, such as the long-term problem with the 10% paid subscription cut, a little bit later…)

I’ll move through this piece by piece…

1. It’s just another social media platform (for now). There’s nothing wrong with this—I think the move makes a lot of sense for most creators and writers—but I’m already active on LinkedIn, X, and soon, Instagram, because my pivot in my personal brand requires my presence on there. My daily Notes felt like they were just puff pieces in a vortex of frustrated creators waxing poetic about slow living, but I grew tired of that. I love the hustle, and I love peace. I want both, so I feel the need to create both in an ecosystem completely of my own design, instead of ingraining myself too deeply in yet another social/community hybrid platform like Substack—since, originally, I planned on using Substack as my primary channel. Another problem is I realized my Ideal Readers are no longer on Substack, but are actually spread across other platforms where topics like fast-moving growth, hustle, and entrepreneurship have a more established engine, rather than a begrudgingly accepted afterthought.

2. My publication doesn’t feel unique and private enough, even with adjustments. I’ve tested many different ways of presenting my newsletter. While the ease of use is impressive, I felt frustrated at the lack of individuality I could give to the branding, experience, and overall discovery engine. Yes, it’s significantly harder to drive traffic outside of Substack to your newsletter, but I would rather drive a smaller, more intentional stream of traffic that fits my Ideal Reader, rather than attracting anyone and everyone who liked a viral Note of mine from a year ago. I then realized a large part of my issues was feeling the pressure to perform, to be someone I wasn’t, because Substack didn’t feel truly private—it felt like the curtain was always open, and I really did not like that feeling.

3. My focus, identity, goals, and voice has… changed. A lot. I went from trying to run an adjacent diary to my LinkedIn personal branding business, to reinventing my brain through psychology and philosophy, to making it focused just on talking about my book, to ranting about art and classical music in an AI-driven world, to talking about my depressive episodes, to strange mixes of all of these categories, and more exhausting rebrands. I kept treading the waters because I was trying to force my way to an answer that made sense. Obviously, changing platforms doesn’t automatically fix these issues… but it helps to downsize my need to post on yet another social platform, and more conscientiously speak to a reader I can actually see.

4. Limited features will be frustrating long-term. I’ve been a copywriter and brander for a long time. (Well, not super long, but long enough). I never liked that I couldn’t implement a strong welcome sequence, or create a more advanced series of sales and story-driven experiences for my readers, in case I wanted to add digital products or special offers later down the line. I was forced to work with paid subscriptions, which we’ll get into next.

5. Losing 10% compounds. Quickly. I have extremely ambitious plans for both of my newsletters—CUT YOUR TEETH, and White Stag—and I plan to make a lot of money with them. I’m thrilled for the storytelling, excited for the self-discovery, and can’t wait how those two letters work in totally different ecosystems to build my reinvention (and the people I can help at a much larger, yet more intimate, scale through them). That being said, I have zero interest giving away 10% of my earnings long-term. If you run a successful publication, those few dollars a month can, in just a couple of years, transform into tens of thousands of dollars that you have rightfully earned, taken from you. (The math just doesn’t work for me)

6. I have more monetization and branding options with Beehiiv. I’m already a huge fan of Beehive’s advanced segmentation tools—things I really wanted from Substack—but I’m also excited for the deeper customization options, and eventual monetization options. Substack’s paid subscriptions work well for some—and some creators that I admire very deeply have sold high-ticket digital products through here, too, which is great—but I need the experience to be more focused. Something about Substack has turned sour for me, and a lot of it is because the publication features and add-ons has always made it feel less and less like it’s truly “mine.”

This is bittersweet.

I think Substack is a fantastic platform.

I really do.

It just ended up not being for me, long-term.

I could write a separate article convincing people to give Substack a chance, easily. The community features are perfect for people who want more soulful people to subscribe to them on a 24/7 basis. While I do believe Substack readers are, on average, so much more intelligent than people who just hang out on other platforms, I want the hybrid combination: the groups of people who are ambitious, entrepreneurial, creative, are not afraid to hustle, and can acknowledge the beauty of slow living when it’s earned.

I’m not saying those people don’t exist on here. They do. And I’m sure there are publications and communities I’m not even aware of that cover all of those boxes.

But, I’m learning that I’m enjoying the creation process on other platforms. I’m learning more about Instagram’s potential, LinkedIn’s untapped baseline (that’s a great place to find clients), X for its conversational leverage and incredible reach, and the movement power of using those pipelines to flood my newsletter.

I got tired of wrestling with Substack’s limitations (for me) and started feeling so much excitement for what Beehiiv can do for both of my newsletters.

Could not be more grateful to my Substack readers, and for Substack’s role in helping me discover what I want to do with my newsletter, and what I want the experience to be.

I considered deleting my publication and vanishing entirely within a few weeks, but maybe this letter will somehow find its way in the ecosystem and hit someone else who needs this message.

If you’re curious about what I’m building—and you’re not currently subscribed to me—you can find the new letter here.

I don’t expect you to click on that, but wanted to provide it in case you’re wondering where this will go. It’s very much alive… just slithering into its new identity.

If you’ve supported me on Substack in any way, seriously—thank you.

If you’re already subscribed to this letter, you’ll be receiving a new letter next week from Taylor Barnes, under the publication name CUT YOUR TEETH.

Things are changing for the better.

And I hope to see you there.

Thank you, Substack.

It’s been fun.

Sincerely,

Taylor

I turned 31 a couple of days ago.

I wrote about it on LinkedIn. Wrote so unflinchingly I felt my chest open up and tears fill my eyes.

It’s a special kind of pain, to confess to a tiny pocket of the internet that you’re both chronically optimistic and also quite crippled with self-doubt and mistrust. (Usually on the same day)

I avoided talking about this on Substack, and avoided Instagram, too. It seems that writers are either flocking to one or the other. I like both for different reasons. (I will set myself on fire, though, if I ever try and open up X or Threads again, because… the noise on those platforms is unbearable)

Reason why is simple: I have a business on LinkedIn and an entirely separate presence that pays my bills (for now) and drinks up the side of me that loves the world of brand language and all the artful in-betweens. That’s a side I want to mostly keep out of the Substack realm, but it’s worth acknowledging for one reason: it’s so strange how the platform I love most (this one, actually) is the one I take the most seriously, and so I end up appearing as a half-formed variant of who I want to be.

I admit this because you can’t write well if you’re not honest.

Honesty creates writing no one else can create. It’s the answer to everything. When you feel lost in your writing, it’s because you’re lying to yourself in some way or another. Question what could be the blockade between you and the idea you’re crafting. Pull yourself out of the vortex of overthinking and notice the hard things.

The art of observation—a skill every brilliant writer possesses—comes with the brutal cloak of honesty thrown over its shoulders in every moment of use.

Anyway, I’m writing this out because I’ve put this off for a long time:

Talking about the book I’m writing.

I recently rebranded my Substack again for this exact reason.

I was tired of putting on the cloak of others—I hate trends, if you couldn’t tell—and was ready to finally be open about documenting the journey. I’ve gotten so used to talking about this book in private for over ten years that it became very difficult to just go: “Oh, right, I should probably document the process if I want to actually get people interested in this fuckery.”

I say this as a joke, but if you’re not affectionately—and not so affectionately—calling your art "fuckery” at some point in the process… are you really doing it right?

As a person who loves many things—and I mean many things—it’s been very challenging to distinguish the two sides of me that are often at war: The Artist, and the Entrepreneur.

Some people have been able to find this interweaving effortlessly. Or, at least, they come across that way. It’s probably not fair for me to make that assumption, since I know how challenging it is when you’re drowning in self-discovery quizzes, studies pertaining to your personality type, neurodivergence diagnoses, and other problems that might affect your self-perception in ways even the most self-observant person would have difficulty decoding.

That being said, writing this book is less about “writing a book” and more about overcoming the mental, physical, and psychological obstacles that have peppered this journey.

And, by doing so, taking responsibility and accepting the onus completely. Because, no one gets better if they weep and moan and self-pity their way through life. I hate thinking that way, I dislike other people who think that way, and I don’t think that pattern is valuable for anyone.

So, to name them, and paint this picture clearly, you deserve to know the hardest parts.

The fact that this story is not at all similar to what it first was when I was sixteen. I was young and stupid and also severely crippled psychologically and mentally by forces beyond my control. There’s also the fact that I lost the draft in two separate hard drive failures—which ended up being blessings in disguise, so we can be grateful for those while also pointing out how ridiculous it was that I didn’t learn my lesson not once, but twice, when it came to forgetting to sync my work to the cloud.

There’s also the matter of getting so used to creating for others that I completely forgot how to create for myself. I was remarkably good at brainwashing myself into being good at jobs I was taking so that I could survive. So good, that it affected the art I was trying to express, and was changing the entire course and purpose of why I was writing a book.

If you’re not sure what I mean, think about it like this—you become so well-versed in understanding marketing and advertising, that you accidentally treat your own work as too much of a product vs. an expression of the self. So the result not only doesn’t reflect how you truly feel, but it reflects only what others want, and not what you want. Then, you feel dead inside, because you neglected what your soul actually wanted to say, and you allowed your self-inflicted manacles to speak for you.

Anyway, I did this. Many times. I would write about 50,000-ish words and scrap the entire thing and start over, because I kept realizing that I was making the same mistake. Over and over again.

The masochistic part of me loves this kind of challenge. This also isn’t new. In college one night, I was almost done with a paper for one of my English Literature professors, and I realized about a paragraph or so away from my conclusion, that I didn’t like the topic I chose. It felt too obvious and pandering. So, I rewrote the entire essay in three hours, the night before it was due.

(The funny part is, the professor didn’t like my updated topic, but he absolutely loved the topic in someone else’s essay that happened to be exactly what I wrote about before I deleted the entire thing and rewrote it from scratch. I don’t regret rewriting it—because I ended up writing about a topic no one else bothered to tackle in that class—but it is funny how the topic I perceived as too obvious ended up being an easy win, if I just stuck with it)

I’m trying to write these diary entries without erasing or cutting anything, so I’m leaving in that little side story above whether you like it or not. I think it illustrates the point I’m trying to make fairly well, though. Disagree in the comments below if you think otherwise…

Now.

This brings us to today.

Some critical changes I want to point out, in case you’re also writing fiction, and you’re struggling with similar issues that drive you up the wall like a spider scurrying for cover:

1. The original idea was much more complex. Needlessly so. I tend to imagine things broadly. My vision starts huge, but also intimate. I can think of an entire world in a few minutes, and get over-excited about it, but I’ll often forget the mechanics of it until too late into the draft. My characters are similar. I tend to really hate large casts of characters because I only have enough interest and emotional energy to invest into three or four at most. My original idea—from world, to characters, to magic system and beyond—were going against everything I loved and wanted to create in my own world. I ended up scrapping everything once again, and starting from an angle I deeply and truly love: a character-driven angle, much shorter in length, with prose that taps into abstract and literal, with a smaller scope the should still feel serious if you look at the bigger picture.

2. I went from 250,000+ words to potentially 75,000-ish. I’m still working on the logistics, but it looks like the true version of the story only needs to be a little less than 100,000 words, rather than this bloated epic that I didn’t like writing anyway. I learned that I really love exploring the psyche and full layers to a protagonist, and doing whatever I can to make small moments feel extensive and layered without adding too much “plot.” (This also dramatically reduces word count and scope, which is why I added that note)

3. This might actually be a series of novellas and novels, not just novels. (Don’t put yourself in a rigid box before you understand how many words you need to tell the story in the best way possible). Depending on how this turns out, I might have a much shorter first book in the series than expected. The thought of that is very exciting, but also quite silly to me, because I’ve read very few novellas. I guess we’ll see how that goes.

4. I created a new mythology (and magic system). I don’t worldbuild as concretely as I used to—unless it’s for brands, oddly enough—as overthinking and over-outlining really interfered with my natural writing process, which is much more intuitive and chaotic, but I decided to sit down and revisit what I wrote. I realized I wanted a much simpler-but-deeper magic system—if you can even call it that anymore—and a mythology that echoes storytelling and archetypes and new ideas that I care about, rather than something that feels exciting just because of its ambition. (Just because it’s ambitious or “new” doesn’t mean it’s good)

5. Every writing process is different, and that’s a good thing. I used to get obsessed with learning writing processes. I wanted to find the right one. Turns out, the best one for me was what was natural to me—writing with a spare kernel, a scene, and just riffing off of that. No outlining. Telling the story to myself, first, and being patient with the process. This is challenging if you’re impatient, like me, but the outcome is so much better when you’re intuitive and just allowing things to flow from your subconscious mind onto the page.

6. I hate TikTok and Instagram, but I’m open to using Instagram to build another brand for myself and this book in a way that no one else is doing. Stay tuned for that… also, there is a very strong chance that the platforms I use the most going forward (for this, at least) will be Substack and YouTube. I’ve always wanted to take YouTube seriously and I need to get over my fears of being perceived through face and voice, so I can take full advantage of owning the things I want to do and sharing my story—and helping other writers, of course—while letting my curiosity go out and fucking play. (Please play forever)

7. I’m finally writing this for me, first. I’m a perfectionist trying to recover from being a perfectionist. How is that possible? Not sure. It probably isn’t. Still, I like to pretend that I’m not as much of a perfectionist as I used to. I look at my old writing and I see nothing but insecurity and stiltedness. I’m working extremely hard to overcome those feelings and understand that even if 99% of the world hates what I put out there—because, yeah, it’s kind of weird and made for me, first—then there’s at least 1% of people who will like it. If I love it first, then nothing else matters. (For the most part… because, you know, money)

8. I’m terrified, excited, and grateful to be working on a story that I love more than anything else, and I’ve accepted that I want this to be my main vocation when the time comes. I want to be rich. Rich in life and rich in money. Most of all, I want to remain rich in creativity and love and happiness, and use money to fuel those dreams. If—when—I make this true for myself as a writer and author, I will be blessed and happy forever. Fuck yeah.

I was going to end it there… but I decided I wanted to share a snippet from the novel. It’s still in its first draft stages, but I’ve been combing through in pieces trying to make sense of what I like and what needs to go. It’s been a fun and challenging process.

So enjoy the snippet below. (Or, don’t)

This might actually be the first time I share any original fiction—at least from this story—with the public. It’s been in my head and in my laptop(s) for so many years that I’ve forgotten what it feels like to let these little tidbits loose in the unedited wild.

Anyway…

Unedited passage from my debut novel, The Silver Thread:

She had been here before. Like many lands that were not lands she had talked about nonstop when the Professor was patient enough to listen, and lenient enough to accept her writing down those musings in the margins of her essays.

He would smile reading them. He would laugh, too; a sound of pure delight, meant for a room of one. She had caught him many times, peering from around the corner whether it was the shadow of their carriage or the frame of a door, and she would see his eyes glisten. There were never any tears. Only a wetness at the cusp of a sob. She would witness him shuffle the pages of her writing, one paper layered on top of the other on a neat little stack beside him, until he would remove his spectacles and wipe at his eyes. He never put them back on.

After reading her thoughts on paper, whether they were exams or letters she had written for him and him alone, he always had a look about him that he never wore around her when he knew she was there.

Thank you for being here.

I will be updating this diary weekly from now on, with entries showing up every Saturday morning.

Stay original, my friend.

- Taylor

There’s something really funny about self-betrayal.

It’s a feeling doesn’t seem real, until you confront its bared fangs for yourself. It’s somehow so foreign, and yet, so uncomfortably familiar, that you’re probably not going to notice it’s breathing down your neck until you feel its teeth sink right in. Flesh, blood, soul, and all.

I’ll admit, first, that I think about this a little too much.

At least once a day, I look back at all those times I committed self-betrayal, and I have to wonder if this is what Christians mean when they talk about “sin.”

Look, I don’t like looking at the world through a black-and-white lens. I like viewing the objectives, the subjectives, and the artistic merit we can discuss as humans, creators, breathers, and makers. I prefer looking at the world and its citizens this way, with emotional stability and endless curiosity. So, while growing up under (very kind, mind you) Christians who taught me human decency, I always had a problem with the word “sin.”

I didn’t understand how sins like stealing, for example, were considered equal to murder under the eyes of God. It not only didn’t make sense, but it was so comical to me, as a child, to think of someone like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin being held to the same ethical standard as an Oliver Twist-type desperado stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family.

It’s moronic, when you think about it.

Why on earth would I apply that logic at all, and especially why would I apply that logic to other areas of my life as a non-Christian?

So I have to ask myself why it makes a disgusting amount of sense that the greatest “sins” I’ve ever committed are against myself.

I’ve written about this ad nauseam. But, it never felt “exactly” right. Some ideas made sense. Other ideas that came out of the noggin felt like they belonged, but in actuality were connected to something else, and so the canvas being painted ended up becoming a whole disorganized sloughed-up mess.

It’s taken me a couple of years to realize that I was committing self-betrayal because I was in a mode of Deep Searching.

Searching through creation, of course. Reckless creation. Building projects that never saw the light of day. Writing spare lines for fiction that I knew would never be published, but could serve greater ideas. Creating spec projects around branding through the written word that sparked an old love that I through was long-forgotten, from copywriting, to creative advertising, to messaging and voice.

Things that I now realize were never actually things I hated, but elements corrupted by surrounding forces. I was allowing the perspectives and actions of others to dictate my love of the things I did.

God, I fail a lot.

A whole fucking lot.

But, I’m comfortable with that, now. My inner perfectionist is throwing a tantrum at this very idea, but the other part of me that’s wildly chaotic, loves throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, and accepts that the chaos might actually create better results than the over-thought, over-framed, over-carved result.

(Here’s the funny thing most AI dogmatics won’t tell you—when you remove the labor, you remove the creative thinking, and if you remove the creative thinking, you remove the human output, and when you remove the human touch, you remove the entire point of using these methods to begin with; just remember the labor is where the magic brews)

The more often I fail, the more I learn, and the more I learn, the more I’m grateful to the bullshit and the witches and the demons who seem like their sole purpose in their entire, miserable little lives is to come on in and fuck with you.

But here’s the thing—life isn’t really worth living if you’re not going to learn how to brave these demons and learn how to unfuck yourself from the fuckery.

So, you just have to move. Move, create, build. Do shit you love. Pull back on what you don’t. You have one purpose on this earth, and that’s to create. What avenues spark joy within you? What can never tire you out, no matter how much energy you pour into it? For me, it’s multiple things.

My brain loves many things, and loves context-switching. I’m at my happiest burying myself in the broad world of writing, branding, and narrative.

Just remember that you’re good at doesn’t necessarily tie into what you actually want to do, no matter how tempting and wayward those demands may be.

Learning this every day, even when I think I’ve figured it out.

Turns out, we’ll never figure it out. That’s cool, too. Live for the adventure, and not the end-result. The labor, not the outcome. That’s what keeps me feeling grounded and connected to my craft, through writing, branding, and beyond. Just have to trust the process, trust myself, and understand that the decisions I’m making today doesn’t have to be the decision of forever. Of anything.

Maybe it’s the same for you, too?

Who the fuck knows…

April 22, 2026.

Your heart is an onion.

I’m writing this with a stupid smile on my face, because this metaphor made a lot of sense to me, and also not at all. It made me think of how we’re so complex and so weird—humans, I mean—but we’re also programmed to try and attach meaning to whatever we encounter in some way, whether that’s designed to build us up or challenge us to improve. We’re hardwired to crave, and seek, progress.

In truth, I hate onions.

Raw onions, specifically.

Unless they’re cooked and sautéed to an oblivion state even the most chaotic devil in Baldur’s Gate would find untouchable, they’re inedible. They make me bawl like a newborn baby over the cutting board, and as a result, I want to throw it out the window and abandon whatever recipe I’m trying out that day. (It’s always unfortunate when I realize that sweet onions, especially, are fragrant staples in some of my favorite dishes, and I would rather throw them out the fucking window than deal with them myself, but here we are… learning).

But, I do like what onions can represent, if you let the thought dance around. Because what’s funnier, and maybe, more adorable, than picturing your human heart as a shy little onion that’s trying to find itself again through all the layers it’s built over the years?

Maybe your onion is made of steel and hard bolts. Or, password-protected with codes only your subconscious knows how to open. Or, it’s a bud. A bud that hasn’t really learned what it’s meant to be an onion, yet, but it wants to know how, and so it will build all the layers it needs, but it’s also not afraid to peel back those papery layers to find the good, fragrant, flavorful goodness within.

I see hearts the same way.

Not the anatomical heart, of course, but the metaphorical one. The one we talk about in stories. With knights and princesses and dragons. With wizards and lost loves and forgotten journeys. With wayward heroes and misunderstood villains. With real villains, too, because apparently Hollywood decided to expose its soft underbelly and take away what it really means to be truly, deeply afraid of something—to have an antagonist with bones.

When I peel back the layers of my heart-onion, I see piece that never died. I see imaginations and thoughts from a girl who just didn’t believe what she had was meant to be seen. She didn’t know what her future would look like—or how life would challenge her with its many, fiery curveballs—but God help her, she was going to do whatever it took to build her Excalibur out of the written word.

I think everyone should look deep into their onions.

Their hearts-that-are-not-actually-hearts. I think this is the case for entrepreneurs, too, because I would be lying to you if I was fully inside this “quiet culture” that rejects building businesses and the hustle and the fast life. I love both. I think we can live in both, and I think we can find happiness and beauty in both.

What are the layers you’ve built? Every onion will look different. Some will be thin and flimsy. Others hard as rock. I think this is factual, no matter who you meet. The one cool thing about this analogy is that everyone has a heart of this variation, and so it connects to an idea that might not make sense now, but will make an unbelievable amount of sense later.

I’m being patient, right now, peeling away at my heart. My onion.

With that patience, I’ve learned rewards. I’ve learned how to manage difficult parts of me that I’ve never really liked, but deserved to be heard and seen, even if it never made a lot of sense, or never felt like it was meant to be.

The onion’s not going away.

Might as well start peeling.