Closing Time (For Now)

Life's new plans, and what that means for this Substack.

Photo by Mohammad Alizade on Unsplash

First off, I hope all of my readers are doing well- I think I owe you all a super belated Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, happy… Lunar New Year?

Anyways, a lot has happened these past few months, including things in my own personal life, and it’s because of recent circumstances that I believe it is time to move on from being a writer on this platform.

Now, I have a lot of things to say regarding me coming to this conclusion, and I may write about it at some time in the future in order to provide a more comprehensive explanation for my departure (again, something I feel I owe to you all for having read and supported my work all these years!).

In short, for readers who have followed my work for some time I have become more vocal with my DISCONTENT (hehehe) regarding Substack and the new meta that has come about in the past year with gamification of content seeming to drive a lot of the posts that have flooded the website/app.

This pairs with the difficulties I and many other smaller writers have experienced in both gaining subscribers as well as converting subscribers to becoming paid members.

For a transparent view, here is a graph plotting “All Subscribers” since I started this Substack. You can clearly see that growth began to slow down even near the end of 2022, with eventual stagnation occurring in late 2023/early 2024:

It was why in 2023 I no longer considered Substack to be a longterm, main source of income for me, resulting in me entering into the workforce around the fall of 2023.

But I still wanted this Substack to work in some way (again, reasons of which I hope to elaborate upon in a future post) and from the time period between my return to the workforce up until the end of 2024 I tried balancing Substack, a full work week, as well as many of the obligations in my life.

Unsurprisingly, this proved difficult- you come to find pretty early on that there’s not enough time in the day to read, comprehend, and write about all of the things that you wanted to, resulting in far lower output than I would have wanted, and to some extent posts that did not live up to the quality that I would have preferred in lieu of just having a post out.

And so for the past few months I have battled internally with figuring out what I should do. Should I continue this Substack even though I’ve had a lot of difficulty in gaining new subscribers? How much effort should I put into this Substack in lieu of this stagnation? How much of my own personal time- time that could be put towards other endeavors- do I sacrifice and put towards this Substack?

The last point was one that I grappled with quite often, because it became far-too difficult to try and do research/write during my free time at work, usually resulting in me having to spend a good portion of my weekend dedicated to getting out posts, resulting in me having less time for other things in my life.

And it’s because of this lack of time that I am now ending my time on Substack, so that I can dedicate my time and efforts towards other aspects of my life, which was made conclusive based upon an incident in early December.

Without going into too much detail, in early December my mom suffered a severe medical emergency, resulting in her ending up in the ICU/hospital for a few days.

Now, for anyone curious she is doing much better, although there’s still a lot of uncertainty regarding her health due to various circumstances.

But it’s because of this situation, and the events that came about due to her hospitalization/current health, that I have reevaluated my time on this platform.

That is, the time I spend dedicated to Substack now means less time I have helping my mom, less time with family, and less time with more meaningful things in my life.

Now, let me be clear and state that this doesn’t mean I consider time spent on Substack meaningless. To the contrary- Substack has helped reshape how I view the world (and science), and quite frankly, helped me realize that I am not alone in how I think, and that there are many people out there who are just as curious and skeptical as I am.

But given current circumstances I couldn’t justify dedicating so much time and effort towards Substack when there are other things in my own life that I should be focusing on.

Like I have stated many times, I hope I can elaborate more on a future post and provide better closure for readers regarding how I have reached this conclusion.

And note that this doesn’t mean a permanent end to my time on this platform, but rather my posts will be extremely sparse in the coming future (if there are any), so I don’t want to leave readers with uncertainty regarding what to expect in the following months.

Because of this, I have also chosen to pause all paid subscriptions indefinitely, and have issued refunds for annual and above subscribers who have renewed/subscribed during my absence.

Unfortunately, I am unsure how to deal with monthly subscription refunds, but because I have been complacent in pausing my refunds for the months in 2025 I will try and manage any refunds that monthly subscribers would like refunded. Again, apologies for not pausing my paid memberships, and if need be I can bite the bullet for my lack of transparency.¹

My ko-fi link is also still available as a one-off means of providing support, but in a similar sense as paid memberships on this Substack I would encourage readers to pause any monthly support on ko-fi due to my ongoing inactivity.

Any free posts will continue to be free for readers, and in fact I will more than likely open up my paid posts for free subscribers as well at some point in the future.

With all this being said, I do want to thank all of my readers who have stuck by me these past few years. It’s because of you all that I have dedicated so much time and effort into making this Substack what it is today.

There’s plenty more I would like to say to you all, but as I have reiterated many times this may be saved for something in the future when I can better gather my words and articulate my thoughts more cohesively.

For now, I wish the best to all of my readers in whatever endeavors you wish to pursue. I wish you all good health, and more importantly a life filled with meaning and happiness- we all certainly could use more of that!

And hey, you never know what the future could bring, and I may decide to return in a greater capacity at some time in the future.

So for now, let’s not consider this a definitive goodbye, but a “see you soon”!

1. In some regard I think my complacency in pausing memberships was just a form of denial, as it would mean that this is really “over”.