In Which I Change it Up

Why I've decided to switch-over to Substack.

For months — or possibly years, I don’t know — my friends have urged me to migrate this blog-slash-newsletter over to Substack. That site has become huge and wildly popular, to the extent that even I had heard of it, and I’m not paying much attention to the interweb these days. But many of my friends were following writers at Substack, so I went and looked one day and found Robert Reich was there (being rather prolific, actually) which convinced me to take it more seriously.

Only one of my friend had misgivings; he’d heard the site was home to a bunch of Nazis. I’d heard something similar and, considering I am living under a proverbial rock, it was a bit of a concern to me. But then I thought, well, Facebook also has a Nazi problem, as do practically all social media sites nowadays. (I mean, even Twitter has Nazis, if you can believe it!)

My friend agreed, and conceded that the world itself has a bit of a Nazi problem these days, and we succumbed to a melancholy pause. Then I had a thought.

“We really should watch Saving Private Ryan again. It would probably be .. what’s the word? … cathartic.”

And in the interests of accuracy and truthfulness, I promptly forgot to watch that movie immediately, because I’m a busy man with a lot on my mind. But last night, I somehow decided to re-watch Dunkirk – you know, the Christopher Nolan movie from 2017. And frankly, it was very tense.

It has to be remembered that my grandfather was a World War II aviator. He’d told me about Spitfires ditching in the English channel, and how pilots had to open the canopy of their aircraft before doing so or risk being trapped and drowning. So, when I originally watched Dunkirk, I knew exactly what was about to happen, and boy, watching that scene did not make me feel okay.

On second-viewing, I noticed the pilot actually opens the canopy, considers the matter for a moment before closing it again. I was almost out of my chair with anxiety. I’m not one of those people who talk to television screens, but I was whispering, dude, you’re freaking me out here…

(Somehow, I am reminded of Senator Mitch McConnell’s billionaire sister-in-law who, last year, drove her car into a pond and drowned. She did not die heroically killing Nazis in a Spitfire; she was merely driving a Tesla while drunk, which makes it, possibly, the very opposite sort of death.)

My grandfather, by the way, flew a Lockheed Hudson bomber. If you look at pictures of that aircraft, you’ll see the pilot’s side window is usually kept open during flight. That was because, as my grandfather explained, ‘sometimes, we had to get out of the plane in a hurry’.

It’s worth mentioning that right outside the cockpit were two massive engines, because is part of the reason my grandfather became mostly deaf. The other reason, unfortunately, was that he was captured by the Japanese, and his prison guards used to beat him around the head with wooden sticks. Such were the stories my grandfather told me as a child. So obviously, I feel no warmth towards fascists. And if you are otherwise inclined, you might as well stop reading here.

Where was I? Right. I’ve decided I will move my newsletter over to Substack. There are a bunch of fairly good reasons behind the decision, though I’m not sure iterating through them would interest anyone. One advantage is that it would ease me into podcasting, which I’ve been meaning to do. Mostly, however, maintaining my newsletter application requires a bit of work on my part, and I’m forever concerned about security breaches, or losing data, so moving to Substack or something like it was probably inevitable.

One problem with my newsletter is that it hasn’t grown terribly much in the past year. Most people only find me via Wrongcards.com and … the thing about ecards that are purportedly ‘wrong for every occasion’ is that they make little sense to a search engine. Google only wants to match you with ‘appropriate ecards’, and has no conception of how dreary and miserable such things are in the real world. Google simply does not understand Wrongcards, so if I ever want to subsist as a writer in today’s world, moving to a place like Substack is probably a good place to be discovered.

So — this is news, by the way — I plan to write at Substack at least twice per week. I know!

I intend to make this my job. I mean, it was before, but I have these children, you see, and look … there’s something about the sight of a man, sitting alone, writing away and being otherwise happy that makes my daughters unsettled. Then they come over and climb all over me and say things like:

“Dadda, you haven’t taken your loving daughters to the park in I-don’t-know-how-long. Surely, you would enjoy that? Stop messing about with that computer. Let’s go, before we lose the light …”

This is how they speak; I taught them their words. Here’s another example:

“Dadda, in my folly, I seem to have knocked over your coffee. Please do not be vexed by me. Instead, let’s have an outing, and perhaps a scone…”

This is how my life sounds and feels. They also sing a lot. In fact, this morning I had a meeting with Hattie’s teacher. The main thing is she is happy with my child. However, apparently Hattie won’t stop singing in class, and it’s difficult for her, the teacher, and the other children to concentrate.

“This year’s class is very polite, actually. They all say, ‘Please, Hattie, stop singing’, and she apologizes, then two minutes later…”

I nod sympathetically.

“Yes, I know about the singing,” I said. “That, chiefly, is why I send her to school.”

I really only have about five-and-a-half hours each day — and five days per week — to be a writer and/or human being. I also need to use a sizeable chunk of that time sitting in a chair, recovering from my morning with Hattie … who, it must be remembered, is intelligent, loquacious, and almost distressingly good at singing.

And considering what my grandfather endured at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army, it would obviously be disrespectful — even indecent — to describe myself as ‘shell-shocked’ by the time Hattie goes off to school. I would never do so, obviously … but that is the only reason.

I am reminded, suddenly, that I wrote a rather longish book in recent years and I’ve not even sent it off to publishers to be rejected yet. I’m too busy dealing with my daughters’ nonsense; I lack the scope for dealing with nonsense from a publishing house.

So, here’s what I’m thinking. I’m going to migrate my newsletter to Substack, and then I’ll start writing at least twice-per-week, with the aim of turning this into a self-sustaining career. I will exercise, and I will continue to write novels when Hattie lets me.

Now, if I fail in these endeavors, I will obviously have to go get a job in an office, and spend the rest of my days terrorizing middle-managers. Which, admittedly, I would also somewhat enjoy. I believe that terrorizing middle-managers is also something of a vocation. One should disrupt their lives in much the same way Hattie and Boudica disrupt mine. Let me tell you, those two children have even taught me a thing or two over the years. For example, if a middle-manager ever berates you for something, did you know you could interrupt their flow by pressing your finger lightly against their nose, and saying, ‘boop’?

Sometimes, I look upon my children with awe.

Anyway, my point here is that I’m going to write these newsletters at a more professional pace, and at least a few times a week. So, in the next day or two, you will receive an email from Substack (I think this will happen, at least) asking you to confirm your subscription to my Substack thing. It’ll be called, ‘My Blameless Life’, or something like that. And I’ll see you over there, hopefully.

In the meantime, well, I’ve got four hours left in which to feel like a human being, so I’m going to take a walk outside with my headphones on and — I say this with a high degree of confidence — somehow forget to turn the music on until I get home.

Yours with chaste affection,

Kris St.Gabriel