Finding my people

On the Substack community.

(A crowd)

Writing for a living is, generally speaking, a lonely existence.

When I worked at the Washington Post and CNN — and before Covid hit — that loneliness was mitigated somewhat by the fact that I worked in a newsroom. I could, at any point, get up and talk to people. And I did! Occasionally!

But, since last December, I have been home. And, while starting this newsletter in February provided me an online community, I still miss those in-person encounters with people who, like me, have chosen a writerly life.

Which brings me to Wednesday night when Substack hosted a gathering in Washington, DC for writers and supporters.

When I first got the invite, I wasn’t sure if I would go. I don’t know a ton of Substack people. It was in downtown DC. At rush hour. My kid had a baseball game. It was cold out. I had to wash my hair. You get the idea.

But, as I have written in this space, I have decided to be in “yes” mode in my life these days. Rather than looking for ways NOT to do things, I am trying to find way to make things happen. Rather than assuming the worst outcome, I am at least trying to keep myself open to the best one.

So, firmly in “yes” mode, I made my way into city and navigated to the party.

I got there early — it started at 6 and I was there by 6:05 — but there were already a decent number of there.

The very first person I saw was the very first person I ever talked to at Substack when I decided to start writing a newsletter: Sophia Efthimiatou. (Sophia is the head of writer relations at Substack.)

There’s something really special about meeting someone in person who a) you’ve only known via Zoom before and b) who helped lift you up in a really hard time. Sophia was (and is) both for me. She shepherded me through my early days at Substack. She answered all my dumb questions. She has been an advocate for me within Substack and to the outside world. She believed in me at a time when not many other people did.

I soon found myself sitting and talking to Matt Labash, who writes Slack Tide (subscribe!) and Hamish McKenzie, one of the founders of Substack. Nate Silver sat down. So did Phillipe Lemoine. And Mary Katherine Ham. (Later, I met Shadi Hamid, who writes the “Wisdom of Crowds” Substack.)

This isn’t to name drop. It is to say that it was REALLY nice to be surrounded by — and in conversation with — people who are thinking about a lot of the same things I am these days. How to build (and monetize) a community of subscribers. How journalism is changing. Is Twitter really dead? Can Donald Trump really win again?

For the next hour or so, I didn’t think at all about what I needed to do in the job hunt. Or whether I would (or should) find a full-time gig sooner rather than later. It was a really nice break from the (at-time relentless) swirl of thoughts about what my future holds.

And, best of all, as I stepped out into the chilly DC night afterwards I felt totally energized. The world seemed, again, full of possibilities. I felt real joy.

This is, I think, what being around creative and interesting people does. It sparks your own creativity. It helps you imagine a world for yourself that you hadn’t been able to conceptualize before.

We — or at least I — need those human interactions. I’ve had far too few of them in the last few years.

For me, for that night at least, I felt like had found a new home. That the people who run Substack — and the people who use it — get me. That they are on a mission not dissimilar from mine. That we could, maybe, figure this out together.

To find people who are your people is a tremendously reassuring feeling. I am thankful I got to feel it.