You Can Share Your Journey + Still Be Figuring It Out
A love/hate letter to Amie McNee
When she had 50,000 followers on Instagram, a writer friend suggested I check out her account, and I immediately loved it. Amie McNee was talking to me—the artist, the writer, the society dropout, the backpacker who skipped over university and a career to follow her heart around the world. She lifted me up with her handwritten signs in block capital letters, bedhead hair, a sometimes blemished chin, and maybe even an accidental nipple flash here and there. She was so real, so herself that it inspired me to believe in more for myself and not to sacrifice my authenticity to get there.
I remember when she started blowing up, friends sharing her posts in their stories, her quotes like an anthem for a generation of starving artists trying to get out of the matrix and live on their own terms. She wasn’t a typical influencer with lip filler and filters to hide her appearance. She came like a tsunami, fast and furious, an eruption of creative force that didn’t have time to put on a mask to get out the message. She was urgent, sensational, and also so right. That’s when I started to hate her, and I hit unfollow.
For a while, Amie McNee was a distant memory, a message that I didn’t want to hear postpartum when all my words ran dry, and I became a machine to keep another human alive. I didn’t want to read her words when I failed to deliver another book project I’d enthusiastically told my followers about, only to jump projects when the muse got bored and flitted to the next thing. I didn’t want her to tell me shit like, “Just because it got no likes doesn’t mean it made no impact,” or “It’s ok to live a life that others don’t understand,” because I was judging myself with vanity metrics and kowtowing to social acceptance over authenticity in my writing. I wasn’t writing my truth or being real about that era of my life when I hunted dick like my self-worth depended on it because I didn’t have it all figured out, and, truthfully, I still don’t. Although I eventually got over my dick brain, Amie’s billboards still irritated me because they reminded me of all the ways I continued to be unkind to myself.
As a writer, I have this deep impulse to put my feelings into words, to capture emotion in prose, first as a catharsis for myself, a way to make sense of life on the page and then share in the hopes of inspiring or creating resonance with others. But shame has held me back for most of my life, so I’ve avoided the discomfort of the truth for a half-truth in my writing, half the story, the part that doesn’t tell you how desperate I once was for approval and attention and anything that approximated that. The part that doesn’t tell you how long I thought about a name for this newsletter and that I regularly doubt I picked the right one. Amie McNee and her daily truth bombs were too much to handle when I wasn’t willing to let go of my perfectionism, the kind that Amie told me is “cockblocking you from all your creative success.”
I launched my Substack in December 2024. I’d been thinking about it and researching for five years before I hit publish on my first article. In all that time, while I was testing publication names and writing bios, I’d gotten married and divorced, moved to Mexico, and had a baby. Lifetimes passed before I decided to write and let others read, not when some publishing house acquired it or when it was New York Times Bestseller ready or even professionally edited. Being on Substack would be about writing because I want to relentlessly chase the truth in life and on the page, and this would be the place where I would finally be the real me for an audience of genuine readers. But once I started, I couldn’t stop putting other writers under a microscope, comparing how many subscribers they had, how many times their content had been restacked, and what witty little seven-word sentence they wrote on their notes to go viral. It was all the same bullshit that I thought I’d left behind on Instagram.
And then, out of nowhere, she popped up again. Amie fucking McNee. She is still holding her obnoxious signs with those killer tits. Still spilling words like a hurricane and going viral with full-length essays like this one about not wanting a job. And this one about why people unfollow her, which I only discovered after writing this essay, but at least now I know I am not alone. She didn’t think about the name of her Substack newsletter for half of a decade; it’s called Amie’s Substack, for fucks sake.
Suddenly, she was all over my feed. Substackers were restacking her articles with captions about how it was the best essay they’d ever read. In a few weeks, she amassed thousands of likes, comments, and shares and added a few thousand subscribers in a fortnight. She is unstoppable. I want to hate her for it, for the success I’ve never had and fear I never will, but I can’t because I know she is speaking to me, and it’s time to listen.
I want to hate her for it, for the success I’ve never had and fear I never will, but I can’t because I know she is speaking to me, and it’s time to listen.
I may still be the girl with a million stories to tell who can’t get over the branding to get to the good stuff. I may still be the girl who is paralyzed to write the damn stories because of some Tamil aunty who will be scandalized by them and the girl who still gets stuck trying to figure out her niche. I am the one who battles a voice in my head that says, “Other people can do it better, so why bother?” This is precisely why I need Amie’s voice shouting back at me in all caps in red and blue marker, “MAKE IT ANYWAY.”
Amie champions people like me who choose unconventional lives outside the box instead of simply getting a job or a university degree. She tells me it is okay to make shitty art and that the world needs it. She says I don’t have to try to fit into the mould; I can be unapologetic about following what lights me up. She makes me feel seen and supported, so instead of hating her, I am thankful for her voice in my world. This being an artist, being a human thing is tough sometimes. But reading Amie’s words makes it a little easier.
And she’s right. We can share our journeys while we figure it out. Our words matter. Our voice matters. Our writing (substitute your creative practice here) doesn’t have to be perfect; we don’t have to be perfect. If Amie’s words can inspire us to do the thing that scares us, write the words we dare not speak, and be proud of our messy human selves in all its rawness, then hers is a voice worth following. She is now my personal cheerleader on the sidelines, reminding me that creativity isn’t a contest; it's a holy calling that is beautiful and necessary and perfect at every stage. I just have to get out there and do it.
So, what do you say? Let’s go and make some fucking art, baby.
And, if you cannot support this publication with a paid subscription, consider buying me a fancy coffee/shot of whisky/ almond croissant. ;) Gracias.
Great piece. Love the voice over.
hahahaha ohhhhh my gosh what a great read. It's a fine balance, just doing what we came here to do and not getting caught up in all the comparison and overthinking and self doubt. This resonates deeply. So happy Andrea connected us!