Splitstack: Time For A Makeover
Why I’m starting a new publication (and shaking this one up)
Feel like sending a little extra love my way? ↓
Alright, I’m going to be merciful and kick this one off with a TL;DR, just in case you don’t have time to read or listen to the whole post, because it’s an important one:
I’m starting a new Substack publication for short stories and other creative writing; I’ll be keeping Chill Theology active but rebranding it to a broader scope of miscellaneous nonfiction personal narrative stuff.
Subscribe to the new publication for free short stories:
But if you’re curious about why I decided to do that and what exactly to expect, the rest of this post is for you.
I also want to start off with a bit of an apology that’s directed as much toward you as it is toward myself.
When I first started writing on Substack, I had promised myself I’d write at least one post per week for at least a full year.
My first post was published on June 20th.
I got real close to the finish line. But I tripped over one of the last hurdles and skipped one for the first time last week.
There are two reasons why this happened (and then I promise I’ll get into the part of this post that you probably actually care about).
The first is that I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to say in this post. Which, in retrospect, was not a very good reason for skipping a week. This is not exactly a post that calls for perfection. I simply wanted to give everyone a bit of a heads-up on the impending changes. I didn’t have an extremely clear picture of what those changes would really look like, but then, it’s not like the changes themselves aren’t liable to change. Life is change (there—I’ve met my theology quota for the week).
The second reason I skipped posting something last week is that I had been jumping the gun a bit, spending a lot of time writing new stuff that’ll be published in the coming weeks. I was, quite understandably, I think, more excited about writing that stuff than writing this post.
So that’s the good news: I’m in no danger of skipping any more weeks for the foreseeable future. On the contrary, I’m going to be simultaneously writing two separate Substack publications moving forward, and, however ambitious it may be, I’m aiming to publish a post per week for each of them.
A Year Of Chill Theology
If I had to sum up why I started writing Chill Theology in a single sentence—not that I have to do anything (does this also count as theology? A stance on free will, maybe?)—it would be this:
I was sick of only writing stuff for other people—creatively exhausting myself with professional work—I wanted to start writing my own stuff, and I felt like religion/spirituality/theology was the subject I should write about because it was the subject I knew most about.
I was letting the category of my publication guide the writing, and not the other way around. At the time, that was the right move for me. The most important thing was to get myself to just start writing and start sharing my writing. Pinning myself down to a specific predetermined (not very free willish, huh?) topic was the most expedient way to do that.
But, as the use of sterile, intellectually cold words like “expedient” might suggest, all of this is starting to feel rather stale.
Writing is my most cherished, important creative practice: it is how I express myself; it is what makes me feel alive and fulfilled and accomplished.
Writing makes me feel that way, not theology.
Yes, I still find religion and spirituality to be extremely important, intriguing topics about which I have a lot to say…just not right now. I said a lot over the past year: 54 posts, averaging about 2,200 words per post—that puts me at nearly 120,000 words total, which is something like a 400-page book.
And, oh yeah, between 2018 and 2022, I actually did ghostwrite a 400-page book on common themes across religions.
Between 2012 and 2018, I wrote enough papers on the subject for college and graduate school to amount to yet another similarly lengthy tome.
Effectively, three 400-page books on the same general topic across 13 years? I’m a bit tapped out—I’m gonna chill for a bit.
There’s a reason I decided not to pursue a career in academia—well, several reasons I suppose, but one of the big ones was that I didn’t want to pin myself down to a single domain of research for the rest of my life. I’ve always seen myself as more of a generalist than a specialist, and I’m happier that way. I mean, ffs, my 7-year professional career has been dotted with jobs as diverse as sports writing, ecommerce content marketing, consulting for a university’s office of religious life, and selling life insurance.
It was only a matter of time before my wanderlust would catch up to me on Substack.
Scribbles & Tales
My latest experimental writing endeavor has been short story writing. I’ve always wanted to write fiction because of how important fiction has been for my overall personal development. I guess I felt like, if I wanted to write anyway, simply out of a compulsive need to do so, then I might as well try to make my writing helpful for other people. Fiction helped me, so I believe in its potential to help other people.
But boy, did I struggle with every attempt I made to write fiction over the course of the last 13 years.
Something changed, though, very recently. As some more time passes and my retroactive clarity on the matter improves, maybe I’ll write something more about what exactly I think changed, or what factors contributed to that change.
What matters is that I feel like I can write fiction now, and I have already written and published two short stories here on Chill Theology (which I have re-published to the new short story publication).
I don’t know how “good” they are—I certainly don’t expect them to be particularly helpful for anyone other than myself—and for now, I don’t particularly care. It just feels good to know that I can finally do this thing that I wasn’t able to do before, and I’m excited about the vast frontier of writing possibilities that has consequently opened up for me.
I’m sure it’ll take some time for me to get dialed into my fiction-writing practice, but I’m very much okay with it being a work in progress that I continue to do out in the open. Knowing that I’m sending stuff out into the world for other eyeballs to consume is the best way for me to really think deeply about how the stories sound, how I feel about them, and what I want to try next.
At the moment, I’d say I’m focused on how to write stories that feel like me: concepts and characters that seem insightful without coming off as didactic or snobbish, dialogue that sounds natural and carries with it some of my personality and sense of humor, and plots that reflect my (theological) conviction that the simplest things in life are often the most enduringly meaningful things.
If I can nail at least one or two of those qualities in each story, I’ll be happy. With enough repetition, the stories will get better. For now, my expectations are low, as is the threshold of personal satisfaction I get from writing them.
So, that’s the new publication, and I hope you will consider subscribing to it—as with Chill Theology, all posts will be free, but I will offer a paid subscription option anyway for those who are able to provide me with a bit of additional support.
Chill Reflections
Now, what to do about Chill Theology?
Like I said, I’ll likely decide to return to writing stuff about religion at some point, and for that reason, I almost decided to keep Chill Theology as is and work on three separate publications.
But, c’mon: I’ve only got two arms.
So, for now, the plan is to change the name of the publication to something else (“Chill Reflections,” to maintain a sense of continuity, unless I come up with something better) and take a break from writing about religion.
I want to leave room for the nonfiction writing to go in whatever directions I need it to, but I have one specific project I want to focus on for a while (with maybe some other miscellaneous posts tossed in there).
I’ve had this idea for a book I wanted to write for a while now, but I’ve long been oscillating between the strong sense of conviction that it was a highly valuable book that needed to be written and read on the one hand, and the fear of it coming across as narcissistic drivel that would fall mostly on deaf ears on the other.
Recently, however, I decided that there is a third set of feelings that trumps these other two:
I want to write it. I think it’ll be fun.
I think the subject of the book will be the perfect vehicle for me to accomplish goals that are similar to some of the ones I have for my fiction writing: conveying through writing my personality, my sense of humor, unique experiences and insights, and more such things that I (and others, I hope) like about myself.
It's not coming from a place of narcissistic drivel. It’s coming from someone who has finally decided to crawl out from under the rock of carefully orchestrated performative humility under which he’s lived for most of his life into the sunlight of genuine and well-earned confidence that is warming and boundless enough to be reflected back to and shared with others.
So, no, it’s not narcissistic.
Just grandiose.
Sue me.
Book Preview
Does the book have a title?
No. Not yet. And I’m in no rush to come up with one. I hate titles. If you want to know what a book or an essay is about, just read it. Read the first page if you need a preview.
When you go to a museum, how often do you actually read the titles of the paintings? How many of those titles do you actually remember? How many of them fundamentally change your experience of the painting itself? [put your hands down, art historians—this doesn’t concern you]
I mean, I didn’t even want to have to come up with a new title for this publication. I just wanted to create a fun logo.
So, no, I don’t know what to call the book for now.
Sue me some more.
I do, however, know exactly what the book is about. I’ve written an outline for it. I’ve written the first two chapters, even.
And I figure, if I’m going to be writing the book anyway, I might as well write it out in the open on Substack for, again, reasons similar to those I have for publishing the fiction writing: it’s going to put just a bit more pressure on me to really say things the right way, the way I want them to sound.
It is going to be a bit of a balancing act to stay on the right side of the narcissism line.
The wrong side of that line would be a self-help book written by someone who thinks his way of life is the best way, that everyone should live like him, and that only he holds the key to unlocking that way of life for others.
The right side of the line, the way I want the book to come across, is a personal narrative infused with practical lessons and advice for people who are dissatisfied with their current way of life but don’t see any feasible alternative.
My next post will be the first chapter of the book, an introductory chapter that will lay out the specifics of what the book is about, why I’m writing it, and so on.
For now, the short version is this:
Since finishing graduate school in 2018, I have had many different jobs. But I’ve never been unemployed, not even during COVID; I’ve never had to worry about paying the bills; I’ve never had to punch in and punch out at particular hours of the day; I’ve never had to go into an office; I’ve never had anyone looking over my shoulder as I’ve worked; I’ve always had work that was, at its core, creatively fulfilling in some way; and, to be totally honest, I almost never work more than 4 or 5 hours a day (not for my professional work, at least).
Somehow, I dodged the rat race.
But that “somehow” wasn’t driven purely by luck or magic; it was driven by vision, strategy, willpower, persistence, and hard (but tolerable, totally manageable) work.
In other words, I managed to achieve a kind of professional lifestyle that feels very humane, liberating, and sustainable, and I was able to do so through replicable means.
People half-jokingly tell me, “I wish I could do what you do for work” all the time, and, honestly, I really think that many of them could.
My work life is not perfect, it’s not without its challenges, and it’s not going to turn anyone into a millionaire overnight—if ever—but it comes with a great sense of freedom and dignity that I find to be invaluable.
The goal of the book is to serve as a kind of playbook for how to get there that takes as much luck and risk out of the equation as possible. You can take the advice or leave it, but it should be advice that is self-evidently actionable and effective.
But, just in case I fall spectacularly flat on my face with all of that, the book will, most importantly, be playful, funny, smart, and entertaining. How could it not be? It’s a story about me written by me.
How’s that for confidence?
Ha.
Thank you for reading/listening! You are the chillest!
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