Finally, my first Substack post!

In which I explain my five-year procrastination and why I won't be niching this newsletter down.

Well, here we go.

I’ve wanted to start a Substack for at least five years. Life had other plans. I was going to give you a recap here, but most of it will come out in ensuing posts with better context, so…

Stay tuned if you want to read about how life feels during and after a five-year emotional hurricane! Maybe you’ve experienced something similar.

Since some of you have followed my work on Michael Jackson, I will mention this. In 2019, I finished the second edition of my book, Man in the Music: The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson. I worked on it for about three years. New interviews, new insights on MJ’s creative process, a better sense of why his albums were so groundbreaking. This version was published by Vintage, a pretty big deal in the book world. Legendary filmmaker Spike Lee wrote a blurb for the front cover. I had a great editor, the same publicist as Margaret Atwood. We had tons of things planned: book signings, an appearance on The Today Show, major news outlets, etc.

Second edition of Man in the Music: The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson (Vintage, 2019).

But a few months before publication, controversy erupted, MJ was (almost) canceled ten years after death, and all anyone wanted to talk about was exactly what my book was trying to avoid: sensationalism. So the book never really got a proper release.

The conundrum was featured in the New York Times though. And (this is not a shameless plug, I remind myself, because authors are supposed to share their work) you can still get it on Amazon.

Then there was Covid, of course. Then I moved across the country and started an outdoor apparel business…

Now I’m recapping when I said I wouldn’t.

Okay, so let me get down to business and tell you what this Substack is about.

I like to write about a lot of things. Music. Books. Movies. Publishing. Culture. Nature. Hiking. Mental health. Building things. Entrepreneurship. Independence. Living a creative, intentional, fulfilling life.

I tried to niche down. Maybe I’d just write about writing and publishing. I knew a lot about those topics. It’s something a lot of people ask me about.

But I wanted a wider palette.

So (at least for now) this Substack will be loose and open, though I’m sure there will be some recurring themes. “Writers end up writing about their obsessions,” says Natalie Goldberg. Very true. One of my obsessions over the past few years has been about forging new paths in the wake of the pandemic.

I was in a bad place a few years ago. Some hard things hit and I started to feel like I was spiraling.

So I went back to some basics, started hiking and getting out in nature more, started reading and writing more, started rewiring my thought patterns, detaching from the daily noise of social media and politics and outrage culture. Things I couldn’t control.

Me with my head in the clouds. My natural state.

It’s still a work in progress. But if nothing else, hard times can be clarifying. I think the pandemic in particular made a lot of people reevaluate what matters in life. That’s a good thing. It’s good to be deliberate about life.

And it’s good, I’ve realized, to have escapes. Writing and reading have always been escapes for me.

Sometimes an “escape” implies avoiding reality, but I don’t think that’s true. I think it depends on the nature of the escape. When I escape into a book or a song or the mountains or a creative project, that world feels more real to me, more rich and textured and alive than day-to-day surface living.

Maybe it’s the same for you?

Well, that’s what this newsletter will be about. That creative life.

If that resonates, welcome, spread the good word, and see you next week!