It's been awhile

Hello again, dear reader.

In case you're new here, I'm Alastair Johnston and you're receiving this newsletter because you subscribed over at my blog or via a link from Substack. I'm grateful for you giving me some of your time and attention and hope I always inform or entertain you here. If not, please feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended.

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I once again find myself in the bit between Christmas and New Year, thinking about time past and plans for the future. It has been a bit of a challenging end to this year, as evidenced by my lack of newsletter posts, my lack of website posts and what you won’t have seen, my lack of consistent and worthwhile journal entries. I have not been writing as much as I wanted or needed to do and this has added to the stress and anxiety.

The Past

Towards the end of the year, a number of big events took place:

• My job was put at risk of redundancy, so I had to navigate re-applying and planning for the worst case scenario. It was pretty hard and even though I succeeded in staying on, the emotional impact of losing good work colleagues took it’s toll.

• My wife managed to break her wrist badly. The impact of this on her was awful, the impact on us as a family meant that I was the sole driver, errand runner etc. This is all ok, marriage is about being there through better or worse, but still it was another layer of life to manage

• We had a parental death in our family. Not wholly unexpected, but still the loss hit hard in waves. The proximity of this to Christmas added to the low level constant sadness.

• Probably as a result of the above, my son and then me came down with really heavy colds/virus/covid infections right before the Christmas holidays. I was pole axed and my energy tanked.

So it’s been an interesting month or three where I have had very little reserves left.

I knew something was off kilter because even writing in my daily journal became a chore and something I kept having to catch up on. And as for online? I just could not get words out.

So this little message is part way of an apology.

I paused, then cancelled paid subscriptions as I could not justify anyone supporting me for no benefit. If you were a previous paid subscriber I want to say thank you, your faith in me or my writing really mattered. Much more-so than the actual cash.

Likewise, for anyone who has bought me a Ko-Fi over the last year, I am so very grateful. It’s only small change but it means a great deal.

So TLDR: I’ve been struggling, I’ve not managed to write much at all, I feel guilty about this, but I’m resting to get ready to go again in the New Year.

The Future

Although I’ve not written much recently, things are bubbling away and I will be back to normal service in January. But there will be a few changes to where and how I write.

My plan is to return to writing all posts on my website and then linking to them with my newsletter. No more blurring my website posts with Substack posts. And I will migrate the good stuff here to the website for posterity.

I’ve become more and more disillusioned by the path Substack wants to go. Algorithms, apps, notes are all moving towards something I have reacted against before. Centralised, controlled walled gardens. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I don’t wish to endorse this. so I will at some point early in 2026 be looking to move my email newsletter to a different platform that just does one thing well.

In theory this should all be easy for me to do, and you, dear reader, shouldn’t notice any real changes. But, if you have subscribed via Substacks App, then I will not have your email so will not be able to migrate you. (Another reason I’m beginning to really dislike Substack’s direction of travel) So if you subscribe by the app, and want to stay on the list, please do subscribe with your own email. Thanks.

Now to get back to recuperating. I wish you a very happy and peaceful New Year when it gets to you, and am very grateful for your time and attention.

That’s it for now.

Be kind and live well!

Comments? Insights? Join the discussion or email me.

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