Starvalanche (n.)

When devotion, delusion, and rent anxiety form a constellation.

Starvalanche (n.)

The paradoxical state or episode of a cocktail of bone-deep integrity and totally irrational hope, rent-anxiety, and creative aliveness, all tangled together in one suction-kind-of-longing that rumbles through your ribcage like:

“I would do this even if no one ever read it and even if it kills me in the process — but OMG please let this be sustainable.”

Accompanied by:

• “Is this just a daddy-issue fantasy of being rescued from capitalism?”

• “OMG, wanting this to work must mean I’m not spiritually mature enough for it to work…”

• “Maybe if I didn’t need it, it would finally happen.” But also, meanwhile Googling ‘cheap meals that still contain protein’

• “What if my hope is the block?” 🤔

• “Shut up, just write for joy, like a non-attached monk with a Ko-fi.”

Symptoms may include:

• refreshing your earnings page before morning coffee, hoping your ‘I’m not doing this for the money’ self isn’t watching

• wanting to be discovered, but only by people with disposable income and high discernment (while trying to trust this isn’t just that daddy issue above, waiting to resurface as a tattoo you can’t afford to laser off)

• faking chill while internally shrieking “OMGOMGOMG” because you went from 7 to 8 subscribers and clearly the universe just confirmed your entire path

• rage-praying

  and

• microdosing hope like it’s probably dangerous in high doses but (hopefully) medicinal in tiny ones

Only to then find yourself weirdly fascinated by the whole swirling mess, and get pulled into infusing it into your writing. Because honestly? If you didn’t, you might die too, so…

Possible side effects:

• spontaneous and deeply symbolic forearm tattoo you swear wasn’t about your unresolved attachment issues.

Filed under:

Creative Devotion with a Side of Doom,

Hope Is a Trap (but make it aesthetic),

Monetized Longing & Other Delusions,

and I Swear This Isn’t a Daddy Issue.

In a sentence:

“My therapist said I should rest. I said I would, right after I finish metabolizing this week’s Starvalanche into a Substack post.”