What I wrote in 2024
2024 has been the biggest writing year of my life.
As we enter a time that invites reflection, I wanted to look back briefly to bookend the year. Besides, I'm a romantic and always get a sullen sweetness from the rearview mirror.
It's hard for me to summarize. To compress everything down. A year's worth of work. "A lot happens in a year," I keep mumbling to myself. I cannot remember the words I've written any more than the meals I have eaten. But still, each has made me.
I wrote some good essays in 2024, but nothing that will be read in 50 years, nothing that could outlive me. Not yet. I also wrote a good number of essays where I couldn't get the ideas ironed out or the words to sit straight. Where I was trying too hard or not trying hard enough. This tension, I've learned, is part of writing. It’s part of me.
These were the ten most popular essays in 2024
Also, if you'd like to read the popular posts from 2023, here are the top five:
On graduating & growing up ← My favorite
What were the themes?
I don't really write with a plan. I tend to write about the top idea in my mind that won’t leave me alone until it’s trapped and structured in words. Most essays take unexpected directions as they unfold.
But when I look back, themes emerge. The furrows plowed by my patterns of thought. The sinkhole I didn't even realize my words were circling.
1- Being embodied
If I had to choose one question that has defined my year, it would be: What does it mean to be embodied?
I tend to over-intellectualize stuff. I can get lost in my head, in my tangle of thoughts, and become removed from the real world. I'm a deep thinker, and I love that part of me, but I have to remember to resurface. To come to the surface of life.
The other day, a friend said he's watched me put down the yoke of existentialism and put on the yoke of embodiment.
As my thinking on embodiment evolved, it became more clear and refined but also more abstract. Early on, I wrote a piece about being an animal, attempting a rough but direct definition of embodiment. Then, I wrote two essays about working with my hands as an antidote to abstraction and a way to care more about your surroundings. First converting a bunkie into my bedroom then building the Log Lodge. Also, I think my essays on rituals and slowness crease the corners of an image of embodied experience.
But the essay that best captures the essence of embodiment, my journey moving from head to heart, is workaholic. It tells the story of my relationship with work and worthiness. Unshackling from my dependence on being busy and productive, my choking ambition, to feel like I'm worthy of existence. Questioning my drive for achievement before it takes me off a cliff. (Funny enough, it's also the hardest I've worked on a single essay: 10 months and 20+ drafts with a writing coach). It didn't get much attention, perhaps due to length, but it's probably the best thing I've written.
2- Stepping away from screens
I wrote two essays about escaping the void of a two-dimensional digital existence.
The first about the end of our extremely online era, which I wrote in short 30-minute intervals, sitting on the dusty wooden floor of a windowless cabin in middle-of-nowhere Newfoundland, a stone’s throw from the Atlantic. I didn't put a ton of thought or time into the actual writing. Rather I found myself continually explaining in conversation how the pendulum will swing, how it has to, and how people are hungry for it. This essay, to my absolute terror, absolutely blew up. After 3.5 years of slow growth, my subscriber count doubled in a week and the essay continues to get a ton of attention. This, I think, has little to do with the quality of the writing and everything to do with the topic. It struck a raw exposed nerve. How empty being online all the time feels, how desperate we are to return to real life.
The second essay was on throwing out your television and focusing on making things instead. TV is older than social media and more engrained, but it still makes me sad walking at night past empty pubs and desolate parks and seeing every living room window lit up by the same ghostly glow.
I've lived these ideas. Nowadays my phone is always on silent, often lost in a drawer. I don't have any social media and chose to delete the Substack app because I wasn't using it intentionally. In the Summer, I deleted the Gmail app and in the Fall, search engines, and just never missed them. It didn't feel that radical once I realized all it takes is a few steps and seconds to open my laptop. And I've stopped watching television almost entirely. Not easy at first, but my evenings became slower and richer. The less I'm on a screen, the better I feel.
As far as technology use goes, I agree with what a friend said after replacing his iPhone with a flip phone: some people may manage digital devices in a healthy happy productive way, but I haven't met any, and I'm not one of them.
3- Commitment & Belonging
Similar to the gradual refinement of my thinking on embodiment, at first, I wrote a direct, definitional essay about the value of committing before you're ready. But branches of the idea contained to weave through my writing. In my essays on how to work and where to live has been the implicit idea that the right things are made, much more than they are just found.
"One of the biggest fallacies about commitment is that there is a right person/city/career out there waiting for you to find it. And once you do, you'll suddenly be ready to commit. But great things aren't just out there waiting for you. They are created. They are built." Co-created in an ecology of commitment.
It's important to choose well but it's probably more important to commit to your choice. There is a point where you have to choose someone or something, very deliberately, and commit to being faithful to that.
Within this idea is an echo of agency. A counterforce to the passive participant who sees a partner or home or job like graduation, something you do once, then the need for effort is over.
The current cultural narrative promotes cultish levels of freedom and individuality and self-centredness. It romanticizes the adventure of travel over the beauty of belonging, almost to a comical degree. People avoid commitment like it's a disease when I know it's the gateway to meaning. “Only the things that are somewhat impossible to undo can be truly romantic.”
If I zoom out even more, the ideas follow a narrative arc:
I want to get out of my head and into my heart
Living more in my body does this (including not being on screens)
This is all to find something more stable and real and nourishing and true; someone I can commit to, somewhere I belong; good soil to plant roots
What was it like to write in 2024?
I've had more time and freedom to read and write and recklessly pursue my intellectual curiosity this year than I ever thought I’d have. Since wrapping up my work on Noah Kagan's book in March, I've been writing as a full-time job, apart from stints of travel. I average 3,000-4,000 words a day, putting me over 1,000,000 words on the year.
It's been a serious blessing. I feel spoiled, guilty almost, by all the time I’ve had to read and write and walk and think. Because I saved enough from past jobs, made good investments, and can keep living expenses low at home, I'm able to prioritize writing and reject work I don't want to do.
Compared to 2023, this all feels more real. Talking to a friend who has written a few books, he said I have what it takes to be a serious writer. Like uppercase-w Writer. I was shaken up because I'd never thought of myself that way.
But, writing full-time has a dark side too. I've had to fight with the fishhooks of shame, as my peer group races ahead in prestigious careers, while I live in various tents and cabins in the woods and write about my thoughts on the Internet.
I can only read for about three hours and write for two before my brain turns to mush. That leaves plenty of time. As someone who's 98th percentile conscientious, and loves to be busy and useful and productive, this presents challenges. The kind words and community here are sacred to me, but in some ways, I don't feel I'm making enough of a contribution or taking on enough responsibility.
It's also been hard to have more people here. The stakes feel higher. It's no longer a casual thing. I put pressure on myself for everything I share to be excellent. I'm afraid of disappointing you. Maybe, of abandonment. Like this could all collapse at any moment.
I've had long periods of feeling far from my writing, like I'm looking in at it through a plate of glass. Like a marriage, or any relationship, to flourish, writing demands I show up every day and put in the time, even when it's hard.
With the thousands of hours and millions of words I've invested into this craft, perhaps what I write sounds better, but it doesn't get any easier. It might actually get harder. So I'm forced to get stronger. But maybe that's true of all things. I don't know.
But I do think my writing has improved, although it's impossible to know. Any improvement I attribute to hard work. Repetition. Anything exceptional has been a result of putting in far more effort than anyone would ever think is reasonable. I've learned I get better at writing by writing. There is simply no substitute for time.
This isn't the important part, but the growth on Substack surpassed my wildest expectations. I thought it would happen eventually, but not this fast. In early January, after reaching 1,000 subscribers I set the goal of 2,000 for year end. Now we're over 4,000 and climbing. Which is nuts. I could tell you how it doesn't feel much different than from when I was writing to ten family and friends, or how scared I get every time I hit publish, or how I struggle with the attention, but instead, I will say it's a blessing to have this many lovely people here interested in my ideas. I can't take credit for any of it.
What I do feel proud of, if proud is the right word, is my ability to keep this promise to myself. To write. To prioritize this work, like I dreamed about for years. I had to say no to many alluring things that would have been distractions.
As I write, I'm continually unearthing my values. What I stand for. This makes the direction is hard to predict. But the truth is in the unfolding, the surprise.
I know I care about beauty, my surroundings, home. I care about commitment and service and sacrifice. I care about protecting my reading and writing and intellectual curiosity, at the tradeoff of career and money. I care about romance. Belonging. Roots. Love. God.
What's coming up?
More ambitious essays. More playful experiments. I want to write about reading. I want to write about the death and revival of religion. I want to write about relationships (or: finding a wife). I want to write more fiction.
Oh, and I want to start writing a book.
I want to use simple words. It's easy, especially if my identity gets tangled up in my writing, to want to sound smart and obscure. And I tend to repeat myself or overly explain, instead of stating what is needed and trusting the reader is a genius (you are!). A careful, well-placed word has enough leverage to move the world. Good writing is surprisingly simple. Really, good writing is invisible.
I want to continue to be personal and honest and vulnerable, not afraid of the darkness inside. To stand in the first-person muck, instead of clambering up to the pulpit to deliver second-person sermons. Our armor is useful, but also tragic. Like I wrote, "As you unearth the darkest, most intimate corners of your fears, only to realize they're not special nor unique, and the things you hide the deepest are the most human parts of you. And the fact we bury it all seems crazy, in a sad sort of way."
I want to be confident enough to take stands, even at the risk of upsetting people or being wrong. I think this is an important prerequisite to the discovery of truth.
And I want to write more foundational essays. Ideas that become an ethos, engrained in my character, cornerstones for how I live my life.
I'm not sure how the writing will evolve. But I will never stop. I'm married to this craft. In it for the long haul, despite how unsexy it is. I will love writing with the same consistency and intensity in 40 years as I do now.
Funding my work
This year, I turned on paid subscriptions after over three years of writing for free.
I did it, I think, in a thoughtful and patient way where money enables my creative work but doesn’t become the central focus. Reaching people, making them feel, and making them think is. This came at a financial tradeoff versus the traditional model of paywalling every essay with edgy cliffhangers. But it's a tradeoff I'm happy to make.
I want to keep this sheltered from needing to make economic sense. I will be a purist, despite the delusion. Because I'm not a consultant or coach or copywriter. I'm a writer.
Art should not be about making money. Art should be about higher things.
In some ways, I wish everything was still free. But, writing is my sole source of income. As of now, I have to rely on savings to continue doing this work.
Each patron’s support makes a genuine difference in allowing me to continue doing this work and prioritizing writing.
The main body of my work will remain free, but I plan to share more experimental, personal, and casual pieces with patrons, like short stories or book recommendations, as well as deluxe editions of essays where I share the behind-the-scenes of my best pieces.
As always, if you want access to all my work but are concerned about the cost, please reach out and I'd be happy to give you a full subscription, free of charge, no questions asked.
I can be contacted by driving around the Kawartha Lakes and calling my name, or else Substack messages and email work too.
Thank you for being here. It's hard to understate how much it means to me.
Wishing you peaceful ends and happy beginnings,
Not intended to be blasphemous, however, “This is my Son, with whom I am well pleased”. It is a privilege to be his Father, and to humbly admire the Man he is becoming. Love Dad
“As I write, I'm continually unearthing my values. What I stand for. This makes the direction is hard to predict. But the truth is in the unfolding, the surprise.”
Tommy, my Saturday mornings, and more importantly, my life, is more meaningful with your unfolding and surprise in it. 🙏