This past week I was asked, “What do you enjoy writing about?”
Writing has always been a part of my life. When I was in high school, the only subject that I enjoyed was English, especially my creative writing class. It was there that I found out about poetry, short stories, forming characters, and the ability to use words to explore my imagination.
In University, that fascination with writing continued. I continued to study words and their meanings and took more creative writing classes. I used to sit on the patio outside the coffee shop I worked at, writing poems and lyrics for future songs, letting my emotions out through each word that hit the page. I filled notebook after notebook out there. Once blogging came out, I started posting some of my writings online.
When I launched my own business back in 2009/2010, I stopped writing out my emotions and started writing to communicate what my business was about; conflict management. I began to teach people how to communicate better and disagree with one another. I talked about communication models, how to apologize, and analyzed current events from the lens of conflict transformation.
Then we lost our son, Ezra. I needed a place to process all that I was feeling. So I started TheShitClub and wrote out my experiences with grief. I wrote about pain, suffering, and the joys of being a dad to three living kids and one child heaven-side.
Over the years, some people started to show up in these different areas until there were people in multiple areas of the internet. Some learn about conflict transformation and leadership, while others read about grief and loss.
Then I started this substack and took those folks from different places on the internet and brought you all here with me. Honestly, I struggled with the decision to do that since I didn’t know what I was going to be creating here, and to be honest, I still don’t fully know. But I decided to bring everyone together, knowing that people could self-select and stay or leave as they saw fit.
So here we are. Last time I checked, we’re over 750 strong here. That’s a lot of people. I’ve spent the last decade writing on and off for folks, and it feels like I’ve lost a little of what it was like to write out of who I am. It feels like I’ve been writing from a lens of business for so long that I’ve forgotten the real reason I started writing in the first place: to explore who I am, what I’m thinking and feeling, and to explore what it’s like being a human being trying to hold the brutal and beautiful all in one hand.
I’ve made some significant professional and personal changes recently (with a few more coming in the upcoming months), so some things might change a little here. Consider this your heads up about those changes! We’ll be taking less of a professional view of things in this part of the internet and trying to build a little more community.
A community of beautifully broken humans who are showing up the best they can with what they have. A community of beautifully broken humans who are attempting to hold the brutal and the beautiful simultaneously. A community of beautifully broken humans who are all worthy of love and belonging even in their current beautifully broken state.
Jason, you write beautifully, every time I have ready your substack posts I have thought that you must be a writer at heart. It shows. Thank you for your thoughts and what you do here, I look forward to reading what you have to offer any time!