How to Do a Second Act

Too great a wound, too small a bow. It's Recovery Month and TSB's birthday.

Sep 07, 2025

Today is the SEVENTH anniversary of The Small Bow. It is funded entirely out of the pockets of paying subscribers. We use your money to help cover the costs of all our editorial operations, including our freelancers, Edith’s illustrations, our meetings, and the production of the podcast. We promise not to blow it on any more billboards.

If our newsletter has helped you feel less wicked and alone, less shitty or afraid, then please consider financially supporting us. Subscribers gain access to the entire archive, the Sunday essay, the complete recommendations roundup, and the comprehensive rundown of my weekly recovery program.

Thank you for letting us be of service and for your continued support. To commemorate our anniversary and Recovery Month, we’re offering a 20% discount on all annual subscriptions throughout September.

Get 20% off for 1 year

Also, all our Sundays are usually paywalled, but today it’s free, including commenting privileges.

If you’d like to become a paid subscriber but can’t afford it at this time, email me: ajd@thesmallbow.com and I’ll hook you up.

Clear eyes, full hearts, etc. — AJD

*****

I've yet to grasp what imposter syndrome is supposed to indicate or how to overcome it. Is it success – or is it failure? And is it an impostEr or an impostOr?

Either way, thanks to some life-changing opportunities, I'm deeply afflicted right now, about as much as I was in the early iterations of this very newsletter in 2018, when TSB was still in its early developmental stage, thanks to the generous influx of real cash and pretend cash courtesy of an ambitious crypto-media startup called Civil. I decided early on to stay away from writing about my own recovery. Instead, I shifted my focus toward publishing other people's recovery stories, which was an easy way for me to hide and pretend I never held lofty ambitions to be a professional writer. I was happy to be a shadow editor, but I was also a little sad about that, too.

Once the money disintegrated, I had no choice but to write more. So began a weekly practice of me writing more frequently and more vulnerably. I found it challenging to write freely because the prospect of new visibility spooked me so much. One of my constant hangups was that I'd be guilty of oversharing, reeking of disingenuousness. And—this is tough to admit—I feared every newsletter I published would be sent over to a group of old Deadspin commenters who would then create their own newsletter chronicling how pathetic I was to be sent out one hour later.

One of the first real writing risks I took was on January 1, 2019, with the subject line, "Happy New Year, Please Don't Stick Chantix Up Your Butt," which was a more dashed-off version of the annual New Year's essay we run here.

I received a few emails about that essay the next day, all from strangers, all people who were clearly up late Googling variations on "How Do I Stop Drinking This Year?" who felt like failures or who were just exhausted by the fact that they no longer felt any twitches of life beneath their skin. After that, I stopped worrying about who read TSB and adopted a more charitable rationale: if there were a few straggling hate-readers, then they might also get something out of it, too. Either way, I had to stop pretending to be someone different from who I was.

Those early days helped lay the groundwork for a space that was open to more people than your typical sober or sober-curious reader. Our stories have a far greater reach than that. TSB is for the unlucky and the unlovable. The ugly and the lost. The good-crazy and batshitters alike. And if you're undecided as to what you qualify as, it's whatever you need it to be. All are welcome.

This is a long way of me extending thanks to you guys, you've helped build this place.

One favor to ask: Our comment section is free today, we'd appreciate it if you could post some of your favorite TSB stories in there to help us with an upcoming project. If you don't have links to all the stories, that's fine. Provide a general description, something along the lines of "the one where you went to the meeting with Superman and the Joker" or "that one that Sarah Miller wrote about Al-Anon," etc.

Thanks again. If you need a meeting today, we have one happening at 1 p.m. PT/4 p.m. ET. Swing through after football.

Here are some early illustrations from TSB Year One.

Alright, let’s log.

DAILY READINGS

A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy

“Sensing how empty their lives are, people dash all over the place in their search for pleasure. But they cannot yet sense the emptiness of the new idiocy that is luring them ever forward.” — Pascal

The following words were inscribed on the bath of King Ching-Chang: “Renew yourself totally every day; do this again, and again, and, once more, again.” — Chinese Wisdom

`FAVORITE POET: JAMES TATE`

Via Hell, I Love Everybody

Good Time Jesus

by James Tate

****

Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dreaming so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it? A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled back, skin falling off. But he wasn’t afraid of that. It was a beautiful day. How ’bout some coffee? Don’t mind if I do. Take a little ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.

— JamesTate.net

`DAILY JOURNALS`

-Notable Fears this week:

INABILITY TO NOT REACT LIKE A NORMAL PERSON TO NORMAL STRESS: I’m so impatient with people; it turns into paranoia.

GRATITUDE LIST:

* That I’ve managed to build a new life, full of certainty and goals that are more spiritual.

* A splendid and happy long weekend with the kids, full of baseball and PS5 and music. It’s exhausting but exhilarating.

* Recognizing that even with some leftover irrational, selfish, destructive behavior, there is an added level of brake-pumping and amending.

* Having access to a shared language and sense of community through self-doubt and panic.

* That my local sports teams are providing enough entertainment for me to shut out some of the world’s horrors temporarily.

* Having a few minutes to sit on the bed, with glasses that work, reading a soft-cover book for twenty pages.

* Better sleeping thanks to an increase in Gabapentin. Not worrying about the drowsiness in the morning, or the lack of motivation.

* Figuring out what it means to stick up for myself, and seeking out more people who would stick up for me because I finally recognize how important that is to me.