Bringing it All Back Home

Photo by Malachi Brooks on Unsplash

First off, I sincerely want to thank everyone who wrote an email, comment, or text checking on me after the PSA earlier this month. I got a lot of very kind, very concerned notes, and the amount of genuine friendliness and neighborly care was a blessing. Thank you to all who did that.

Second, I (who am perfectly fine!) owe a bit of an explanation. On July 4 weekend I published an article that, while not untruthful or un-Christian in any way, was not my best work. I wrote that article not because I was moved by a particular insight, or had been mulling something carefully and thoughtfully, but because I felt a compulsion to get some piece of content out there for the holiday. The result was an article that was “shooting from the hip"— which is one thing if you’re talking about pop culture or hobbies, and quite another if you’re making a point that people may and probably will read as politically coded.

I received no unkind comments in response to that post. I did receive some pushback. And the pushback made me realize that I had no good answer for it. It was at that point that I realized I had fallen into a trap I had long struggled to avoid:

I was trying to become a content creator.

The realization that I had put my name on something I wasn’t proud of, simply to make a splash in the online ecosphere, frustrated and embarrassed me. I pulled the article down from the site, and hastily put up a “Out to lunch” sign. Why? Not just because of one moment, but because the moment seemed to me a capstone of what has been a prolonged season of uncertainty and unfruitfulness in my writing.

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As I mentioned previously this year, after I finished edits on my forthcoming book this past winter, I felt something that was equal parts exhaustion, writer’s block, and depression. I was “tapped” in a way that felt unusually aggressive. Long story short, I think this season may be starting to lift, and a part of that lifitng has been some core realignments I’ve been thinking through.

One of those changes has been a deliberate change in how I relate to this newsletter, and to Substack’s ecosystem in general.

Substack has been a wonderful place to write and read. But it is not quite the same place it was when I joined. The roll out of the Substack app in early 2022 was a major warning shot about the kind of platform Substack was aspiring to become. I was an early adopter of the mobile app, and soon had stopped receiving most emails and instead was redirecting my subscriptions through the app. This alone was a radical departure from the very reasons I had embraced Substack in 2020. Email was, and (in my view) still is, a powerful antidote to the mess that has become social media. Asking people to subject themselves to algorithmic tyranny, with its attendant outrage and brainrot spectacles, just to read a particular writer, is outrageous. Email newsletters were and are a better way. But Substack’s app was a major step backward, toward algorithmic social media and the wild jungle it invariably forms.

My biggest regret as a writer is how deeply shaped I’ve been by social media my entire career. For someone who’s written at length about the need to resist digital formation, more often than not, I’ve relied on heavy social media use to both bring me interesting pieces of writing and tune the hum of my thinking. This, I’m sure, has resulted in my becoming a less deep, less interesting, less patient, and less confident writer than I might have been otherwise. I see a pattern of choosing short term algorithmic boosts over holding patterns where an idea can mature and words can season.

Substack’s app is a social media platform, plain and simple. The main Substack feed is a collection of short pieces of content that are, most of the time, attempts to go viral. Substack’s algorithm works just as tirelessly as Instagram or X’s to bring you posts you didn’t search for and accounts you don’t actually follow. The goal, as with all alogorthmic social media feeds, is to make the user feel perfectly content in Substack’s app, and unwilling to spend clicks anywhere else.

And the app has done its job. Substack’s social media feature is high-quality; the posts there are wittier, more interesting, and generally more positive than any other place. If there’s ever been an argument that you can build an algorthmic social media feed that doesn’t make you want to burn down America, Substack has got it. But, as Andy Crouch once wrote about technology, “can” tends to become “should." And the possibility of going viral, of getting a ton of new subscribers or followers, based on some pithy, zero-sum, or flesh-feeding piece of content, haunts the writer’s conscience. It did mine. And I think for a while I lost my way.

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For a long time I’ve tried to avoid looking at these facts in the face:

1. I’ve almost certainly accomplished most or possibly all of what I will accomplish as a professional writer.

2. My season of life—vocation, family, church, education, etc.—is, right now, forcing me to choose between quantity and quality.

3. My gifts and my abilities are from God, and it’s honor and his glory that matter more than mine.

If I put these facts together, what comes out is not radical or shocking. It’s just a simple, quiet, honest accounting of my life and my work that I was avoiding. The desire to go viral or become very famous is both a spiritually destructive desire, and a very silly one. That’s just not how the online writing economy goes. Writers do not blow up the internet anymore (and if they did, A.I. is already here to take that away from them). Content creators do, but only after (in many cases) sacrificing their convictions, their mental health, and their dignity. That’s not me. So the book of fame needs to be shut and not reopened. It’s not the goal, and it’s not going to happen whether it’s the goal or not.

By God’s kindness, my writing has found a small but dedicated corner of the Internet. What I want to do in this new season is cultivate this corner, rather than try to expand it. I want to make it better: deeper, healthier, and more vibrant. I want to break away from the demand for quantity and instead provide something of real value, even if it doesn’t map onto the algorithm or track with what’s trending. I want to focus on those topics that really matter and will really matter next year, and the year after that, and by God’s grace to write about those topics with a carefulness and substantiveness that is befitting their seriousness.

To get about this new season, I’m making a few changes. One of those changes involves pulling out almost entirely from the Substack social media feed. I’ve deleted the app and will not be present on it. I’ve redirected my subscriptions to once again come to me via email. While I am staying on Substack for now, I’m taking deliberate action to make the platform the way I want it, rather than the way it wants to be for me.

But one of the changes I’m going to make on the newsletter side is: Starting in August, all of this newsletter will be behind the subscriber paywall, with the possible exception of 1 free post per month.

I know how people feel about this before they tell me. So let me explain how this fits into everything I’ve just said.

First, I have to confront the reality that writing is work, and that continuing to produce massive amounts of free work is unwise from the perspective of a family breadwinner. Particularly if I am committed to doing the kind of work that will not attract cheap attention, I owe it to my family to amplify the value of my trade as much as possible. I want this newsletter to be an active place, but I can’t do everything. The paywall is a small but real way of keeping it active.

The paywall isn’t just a way for me to make money. The paywall is what its name implies: A wall. As a friend has eloquently put, what’s needed in the online world today are not massive commons like Facebook, but “little walled gardens” where people can pursue the true, good, and beautiful intentionally. The paywall is a way of focusing my attention and efforts in a way that frees from me the anxiety of whether my efforts will “grow my brand.” In a word, I am no longer writing for the entire world. I’m writing for those who find something valuable in this walled garden.

I understand that the paywall will, by definition, exclude a lot of people who enjoy reading. I also understand that right now is not a great time to ask people to pay for online writing. Let me assure everyone that I do not expect everyone to be able to do this. This is not a fund raising post. It’s a new direction. Of course, I really do hope many will consider subscribing, as many of you already do.

The new season of this newsletter will feature longer but less frequent content. I do hope for 2-3 posts per month at least. I also may add a link roundup to the regular schedule. My goal is to extricate myself from both the algorithmic impulse and the grind of content regularity. I’m not trying to get big. I’m trying to think out loud faithfully.

I deeply appreciate this space’s readers. And I’m very excited about what lies ahead.

SDJ