A year of fucking around with Lumberjack
How I nearly destroyed my blog and audience
Hello friend, it’s been a while! I owe you an apology.
Last year I had the idea that I would move the Lumberjack to Ghost because I wanted more control over SEO and automations. That was a colossal mistake because it introduced a level of complexity I wasn’t prepared to handle.
I made a series of misguided decisions that slowly evaporated the activity of this community. I tried reimagining how to keep this running but I never really figured it out.
On a separate track I finally spent more time building Alfred which became a huge project. I also launched the Screenless Dad to be an outlet for a more specialized adventure: reducing dependence of screens while raising a child.
This left the Lumberjack a bit orphaned. I wanted to keep it as a log for the technical aspects of building Alfred and all my other work. But I also wanted to be free of the pressure of writing detailed analysis of the AI space, mainly because I got tired of it.
This blog never really found its voice. It has always been a messy place for my messy thoughts trying to organize themselves.
A few weeks ago two things happened that forced me to change things.
Someone approached me that they wanted to acquire the Lumberjack. The deal never went through but it was a good wake up call.
My Mailgun account was disabled for some blatant reason and support can’t seem to help so my Ghost publication is now stuck.
So now I’m at a crossroads on either letting this be the death of the Lumberjack or maybe try to return to the setup that worked for over a year: Substack.
I was almost ready to pull the plug. The Lumberjack had a legacy in its inception that I don’t think fondly of and I have the Screenless Dad going anyway. But then I got a phone call a few days ago and someone asked me when I was going to publish the next essay. All of a sudden I realized that this whole year of trying to automate away my mental study, where I learn what I think about AI and technology was a mistake.
Why am I writing this? Because I fucked up and I want to be honest about that. And because I will make a final attempt at reviving it, here on Substack as it was before.
Ironically, trying to automate the Lumberjack is what killed its soul. In doing so I left a platform for a self hosted one and introduced so many moving parts that the maintenance alone offset the time savings I could generate from automating things.
But most importantly I stopped using writing as a way to learn what I think about things. It didn’t stop me from learning but the carefully curated order in my head about AI, automation and technology in general slowly started to decay.
So I will return to the setup that always worked, the original vision of the Lumberjack:
Writing for myself, not to grow an audience or to monetize it.
Running it here on Substack so I don’t have to think about housekeeping.
Sharing at least one post per week, even if it’s just a few simple thoughts.
I’ve no idea if you’re still reading or still with me. If you are, please reply to this email so I know there’s someone at the other end.
I will come back with a fresh, true Lumberjack post soon, because I have a lot to say.



Glad you're back. Looking forward to more!
Welcome back! Looking forward for your thoughts.