Hi, still treading out there?

Where the I've been and what happened to this newsletter.

Long time no talk, huh?

When I started this newsletter—good lord—three years ago before promptly abandoning it, I wanted it to be a lot of things. There was, of course, the heart of it: a place of my own to talk about suicidal ideation and connect with others who felt the same way.

I can’t lie. It was also part of an exit strategy. At the time, it was the height of the pandemic and I was churning out article after article about my mental health for a company that didn’t actually care about my mental health (because tbh, most of them don’t as soon as it impacts your productivity). And so I launched this newsletter and fantasized about building something on the side that would eventually ease my transition into something different, something better.

Shocking to no one, it turns out that when you’re burned out and suicidal and have to spend all your time writing to meet a quota, there isn’t much left over for more writing—even if it’s the writing that’s most important to you. So this newsletter—a newsletter that you guys have miraculously continued to subscribe to and grow despite my silence—became yet another thing I couldn’t scrounge up the will to do.

Eventually, I pivoted industries completely, accepted another full-time job, took a break from writing, and hoped I was kicking off a new era where work wouldn’t dominate my life and mental health. Instead, things got worse. Long story short…like a lot of people, I’ve spent the past few years doing nothing more than trying—and sometimes failing—to keep afloat. I didn’t expect to be stuck in this dark limbo for so long, but looking back on my post announcing this newsletter, I feel like I could have written it today. The times, they’re bleak.

Slowly but surely, I’m coming out of the darkest of it. I got laid off late last year and have spent the last six months coughing the water out of my lungs and gathering new flotation devices for this metaphorical ocean we’re all in. In other words, recovering. My focus has been on getting to know myself outside of my work and the dreams that no longer align with our rapidly-evolving future. I’ve found my way back to creativity for creativity’s sake and have spent a lot of time exploring what this next era of my life can look like.

On the career front, I’m not sure when exactly I can transition from calling myself “unemployed” to “freelance,” but that’s the direction I’m heading in. Because of that, I thought it was time to revive this dusty old thing. So…hi again. How’s the water been on your side of the ocean?

What is this newsletter now? Beyond “no longer dead,” I’m not exactly sure.

On a practical level, I’ll be using this space for mental health writing, community building, and as a way for people to keep up with my other work in general—plenty about suicidal ideation still, but not only that.

If you like my mental health writing, I hope you’ll stay subscribed as the scope expands. Because at the end of the day, when you live in the ocean, aren’t most things at least a little bit about suicidal ideation, anyway?