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.

1. Someone approached me that they wanted to acquire the Lumberjack. The deal never went through but it was a good wake up call.

2. 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:

1. Writing for myself, not to grow an audience or to monetize it.

2. Running it here on Substack so I don’t have to think about housekeeping.

3. 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.