This is a post entitled “Welcome to my Substack.” Though I haven’t checked, I’m sure it’s not an original title by any stretch. In fact there are probably dozens if not hundreds of posts with this exact title all over Substack, and certainly slight variations on this title have sprung up all across the web since shortly after the Internet was founded.
Many if not most of these are doomed to go nowhere. And this very publication may well share the same fate. Aspiring writers with dreams of virality hop onto some platform with no real plan except to win anonymous crowds over with naught but their personality, which often suggests if not outright screams “I don’t know what I’m doing!”
Frankly, I don’t anticipate doing much better here, and you may well have already added my own scream to the chorus. That’s fine.
If I find any modicum of success on this platform, this post’s title will be, at best, somewhat ironic. Few, if any, will read it today. The only people who will read it in years to come are people who don’t need to be welcomed. They may look back at previous posts hoping for more to read only to find this disappointing opener.
Hello, future readers who need no welcome. 👋🏻
🔍 What’s the point?
The purpose of this publication will primarily be to catalog my thoughts. And by catalog, I mean “dump.” Social media has, in my opinion, proven flaky and unreliable compared to having more direct control over one’s own presence. Unfortunately, the days of personal blogs with RSS feeds seem to have passed, though I wish they’d return. In their place are platforms like Facebook and Twitter (now X), where people write according to the whims of the algorithm in what often devolves into engagement-bait for undiscerning users. On Facebook, if it’s not information of dubious veracity, it’s some kind of generative AI imagery designed to deceive the same generation that warned millennials not to “believe everything you see on television.” On Twitter, it’s nonsense followed with the thread emoji (🧵). And don’t even get me started on Reddit.
But I digress. Many social media platforms have come and gone. I don’t even recall their names. They all develop their fair share of problems eventually. Sooner or later, their algorithms punish their star users to favor paid advertisers. It’s an endless cycle of the pineapple-on-head meme all the way down.
👨🏻💻 But what will I write about?
I’ve long been a technologist at heart. I first started learning to code at the age of seven, and haven’t taken a break in just about thirty years now. For as long as I can remember, I’ve maintained some kind of personal coding project. I’m hardly unique in that regard; I think most software developers do. But I found myself increasingly unable to escape the endless battle against bitrot, even on my free time. I’d dedicate myself to an engaging and educational personal project for years at a time, only to find myself pacing the maintenance treadmill both on and off the clock, working on projects that were in no state to share.
But recently, I’ve turned the focus of my free time toward a more lasting pursuit: writing. The written word has staying power. It has the potential to last for years. My thoughts are unlikely valuable enough to mean much of anything to anyone beyond my children in future years. But many of civilization’s greatest works have lasted for millennia. Every day, young and old enjoy the works of Tolkien, who published the Hobbit nearly a century ago, they study the scripts of the Bard, whose life ended back in 1616, and they set the course of their lives by words first written by Moses untold thousands of years ago. We will all return to dust. But perhaps we should each spend some effort reaching into the future, if only a little bit.
I suppose I am blessed that I suffer the weight of existential thoughts only during my free time.
📚 Oh, it’s about writing…
So the primary purpose and focus of this publication will be to cultivate an audience for my own works of fiction, written and published on my own time for largely my own enjoyment. If you’re a person who, like me, is interested in science fiction and fantasy, I may have things to say that are of interest to you. If you’re not interested in those things, I make no promises.
At the time of this writing, I have published one novella entitled Valen the Rogue in the Domain of Darkness, and anticipate soon publishing its sequel, Valen the Rogue and the Starlit Scepter. My goal in writing these has been to recapture the style of 1970’s pulp sword and sorcery. The scopes of the stories are small. The stakes aren’t world-ending. The protagonist isn’t a paragon of virtue. And, perhaps most importantly, they didn’t take decades to write.
🪙 World-Wide Wishing Well
I once worked with a man who was known around the office for having many side projects, some of which made him a decent side income. I suspect that he exaggerated the amount he made from those side projects, as he remained at the same company doing the same job as the rest of us. But they did make some money. His advice about the Internet had to do with comparing it to a great big fountain, into which people would occasionally throw loose change. A world-wide wishing well, if you will. It’s impossible to catch most of the coins. It’s pointless to even try. But if you widen your net a bit, you may just catch some.
It’s my hope to catch a few [figurative, and perhaps even literal] coins.
💸 Wait, isn’t Substack a Paid Platform?
I guess so. I don’t pay for anyone’s writing on here. I do subscribe (for free) to a few people and anticipate their thoughts in my inbox on an irregular basis. That’s the same deal I’d like to give you. My posts will remain free of charge. If I set up paid subscriptions, it will be on a purely voluntary basis. If ever decide to lock anything behind a paywall, it would be things like pre-release chapters of upcoming works.
Frankly, if money needs to change hands, at this point it would be me paying you to read my thoughts. Not the other way around. And I can assure you, there’s not enough money in my bank account for that.
So, once again, welcome to what may well be a soon-abandoned publication from a person who has no idea what they’re doing.