Why am I here?

This is the first post of my “Finding a good path” Substack. I publish here (will publish - I’m writing this at a very early stage of migrating here) about all manner of things; nature, forest school, education, difficult conversations, mentoring, finding good paths, swimming, books, trees, and a whole load of other stuff which might, and historically has, taken my fancy. Whilst this is on Substack, this isn’t designed as a paid service, it’s just stuff I want to put out into the world. I think of it more like a new home.

You can subscribe for free. I won’t nag you to upgrade / pay me, derivatives thereof. (I might get the setting wrong occasionally and I think substack itself sometimes encourages you to upgrade, but that’s not me!) You can choose to buy me an occasional mango if you like, but there’s really no need. I think the paid model is important at a platform level, to allow substack to stay ad free and to allow “real” creators to make some money. I’m not claiming to be in that space! I’d just like to send some letters to some people.

I decided to migrate here for a number of reasons:

1. I really love Substack - no adverts, people who are real writers, artists and other skilled creatives (i.e. not me) get paid for creating things, I’m a big reader here, so feels right to partake in it from the other side. But for me it feels like friendly social media / blog / keeping up to date with people who I might know.

2. I retired my self hosted blog which I had since 2012, I simply got fed up the WordPress admin and maintenance. I wanted someone else to do the platform management. (I brought my domain name with me though).

3. I’m not really into social media in the tradition sense. I’ve had accounts on most of the big platforms at various times over the years since 2007, but I’m divesting away from all that as it doesn’t really make me happy.

4. I love letters and this feels like writing letters.

5. I do have an active / up to date LinkedIn account for my (current, near to expiry) paid career in the humanitarian space, but I found that all I want to post on it is pictures of trees, bees, green woodworking projects and the like. This probably misses the point of LinkedIn (although I do like the generic principle of not posting about what amazing awards I’ve won, what great projects I achieved, what high heights I’ve reached (see Wankonomics for a more articulate and utterly hilarious take down of LinkedIn, and go see their live shows if you can), so I may as well post things in a somewhat relevant place where people might actually care.

6. I can see an end already to my LinkedIn involvement / activity and also to that stage of my career. There are however many nice people I’ve met along the way and I’d love to stay in touch with them. In my world we’d exchange letters (I own a typewriter and do send real letters to people like its the 1970’s) or at least long form emails, but I also accept that’s rarely people’s bag right now, so I need a place where people can find me in an online world, should they so desire.

7. I want to put nice things and positivity into the world. This feels like a good place to do that. It’s nice here.

Much Love,

Graham