In a much less vicious version of the all-too-popular “whataboutism” we see so much of, some readers have asked me, “Well, what about YOU? What do YOU want?”
As you may surmise, I could go on about that for pages upon pages. There’s always been so much that I want, but I’ve always been willing to do what I must to actually get what I want.
But to keep this response focused, brief, and relevant I’m going to answer the extended question, “what do I want from this Substack journal I’m writing?”
What I Want from This Substack Journal
Various people refer to their publications here on Substack as, simply, their Substack. The folks who run the platform would have us all call them newsletters, but that’s not really what they all are. Some are. Some are more an ongoing, episodic journal, and that’s really what I feel I’m creating here.
That said, the thing I want most from this journal is to prompt conversations. I want to inspire some deeper thinking among my readers to the point where they want to respond. Argue with me. Disagree. Or, take things I’ve said further and provide other readers with even more thoughts. The way I figure it, the more good thinking we share, the more lively the conversation, the more we all grow and prosper.
Why I Want This
What got me here? What prompted me to decide to create a journal on Substack for the purpose of sharing insights and prompting lively discussions?
This begins with my father, who passed away when I was 15 years old.
Dad was a simple guy. He worked in a New York delicatessen making sandwiches at the counter. My Mom referred to him as a “baloney slicer.” But he was never “full of baloney.” He was probably the most honest, gentle, generous person I’ve ever known.
He had no hidden corners. What you saw was really what you got. I don’t remember seeing him ever put on any kind of façade. Genuine. Everybody he encountered was a person, not a black person or a white person, or a “goy,” or anything else. Because he was only 5’2” tall, he had served in World War II as a foot messenger, running through the underbrush to deliver quick messages from one officer to another. It was reasoned that he was so short he would never get caught up in any of the razor wire the enemy had strung across the trees. Yeah, gives me those nasty images too. Hard to get them out of your mind.
The other thing that everyone who knew him said about my dad was that he would “give you the shirt off his back.” He was beyond generous which was especially amazing for someone who actually had so little. If he heard someone he knew was in trouble, had fallen ill, had been injured, or had simply lost something and was looking for it, Dad would rush to their side to help. Much later I would come to realize that my dad simply, innately believed in living a life of service to others. Given his military service and his chosen profession, that made sense. All he ever really did was serve.
A Life of Service to Others
Dad was never one to preach. He actually found it difficult to explain difficult things. Our “birds & bees” conversation was, well, something I just can’t do justice to in any kind of explanation. Suffice it to say the two things I remember about that exchange were the extreme look of pain on his face throughout the episode, and my closing it off by callously saying, “Oh, I knew all that, Dad.” He saw that as a rescue…
But without preaching, my dad conveyed to me the importance of living a life of service to others. Nothing was more important to him than other people. Didn’t even really matter who. In the last few months of his life, he took to collecting for Israel relief on his way to and from work on the subway. Someone he met had told him about the plight of the Israelis and that was enough to send him off on this mission.
That’s not to say that Dad was any kind of Don Quixote. The one phrase I best remember him sharing with me over and over again as I came into my teens was, “Don’t be a reactionary. Be a realist.” I thought that referred to the reactionaries during the war, but not really. I would later realize he meant that I shouldn’t react to things going on around me, but rather take action to do what I knew needed to be done. Act, don’t react. Wish I’d understood him when back when he was saying that to me.
After he passed, I changed. Dramatically. At first I spent my fifteenth year on a bender drinking way too much Boone’s Farm Apple Wine, as disgusting as I remember it being. That year ended with me screaming out my kitchen window in anger with him for leaving me alone. I have always thanked God for the wonderful friends who surrounded and supported me as I struggled to regain my grip.
I found work in the local community center that I had grown up in, and was drawn into local political activity in an attempt to improve funding. I also involved myself in school government, writing for a local newspaper, and anything else I could do to make an impact that would help people. It was, at that point in my life, the only thing that made me feel good.
Except my writing.
My writing has always been my best friend. It has always been there for me to pour my heart out to when I needed to. It was where I turned when I didn’t know what to do. It was where I turned to figure out how to do the things I needed to do. It was my release, my confessional, and the only place I could go to really think.
One Career Past, We Wake Eternal
When I realized that I had completed my career in the information technology (IT) industry, I needed to figure out what my next act would be. A very dear friend suggested that I employ my love of writing and pursue it a career as a commercial copywriter. He had a cousin who was doing it and doing very well. That suggestion was really where this journal began.
My second career launched easily and grew rapidly. The tremendous, wonderful network of friends I had been fortunate to find during my IT career. Some of them clamored to become my earliest clients, while others referred people who needed writers to talk to me.
For the past 15 years I have been writing for and about the IT industry and loving it. I still do. I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon.
But something was missing. In my earliest writing I had always experienced a wonderful catharsis when I was writing, as if everything else faded away and it was just me and the words flowing easily onto the screen. In commercial copywriting, that catharsis never occurred.
My dear mentor of 50 years helped me understand that I wasn’t doing any writing for myself, in my own voice. I was writing for advertisers, sponsors, and clients in their voices, and doing so successfully.
When I encountered Substack I realized I had found a platform on which I could do what he suggested, and every time I write this or my other Substack publication, The Business Technologist’s Journal, I fall deeply into that wonderful old friend, my writer’s catharsis.
Mind-Reading
In his wonderful book, On Writing, the greater horror writer Stephen King explains that writing is an act of mind-reading. The writer sends their thoughts out, and the reader receives them. I love that.
So I’m here working to live a fuller life of service to others by providing frameworks for thinking about what we really want out of life, and enjoying my writer’s catharsis as a wonderful by-product of doing that. I truly believe what I say in my autosig, “the more good you do for more people, the more good finds its way back around to you.”
That’s what I want. To do more good.