Celebrating 1 Year on Substack

What I've learned, thanks to all of you, and what's next

On March 4th of 2022, I sat down and wrote my first post on Substack where I opened up about my mental health struggles.

In that post, I shared what had been the central subconscious doctrine of my life:

Andy without achievement = unloveable

Andy with achievement = loveable

Thanks to the last several years of earnest inner-engineering work, I’ve started to unwind that core belief. My value as a person is less tied to external measures of success than it used to be, and as a result, I feel freer than I’ve ever been.

Free to be me. Free to share what’s on my mind. Free to live how I want to. And free to be honest. No more hiding behind a facade of professional esteem and financial attainment.

Rewriting my negative internal narrative has also freed me up to stumble into what you might refer to as “a calling.”

Writing and communicating about complex aspects of the human experience, especially those that influence mental health, seems to be what I’m here for. I understand now that I struggled so that I could first learn how to help myself, and by extension, be able to help others.

Since my first post on March 4th of 2022, I now have a wonderful following of 7,500 readers who are on their own journey of self-discovery and wellness. In total, I published 23 pieces (20 articles and 3 podcasts) that were viewed nearly 50,000 times in the last year. That’s more impact and reach than I expected when I started out.

I want to thank all of you for your support and encouragement along the way. Receiving messages like the one below is what fills me with the energy to keep writing and sharing. So, don’t be afraid to say hi!

That said, I do have plans to expand my writing and mental health advocacy. I’m building a new web app where I’ll be producing a lot of my content moving forward. I expect the barebones MVP of it to be complete by early April. At that point, I’m going to do a lot of writing and publishing there, in addition to my posts on Substack.

With my new website, I have a simple goal: Create the most useful mental health library on the internet.

It’s simple to say, but hard to pull off. It will take many years to accomplish, but the good news is I have the time, the experience, the tools, and the desire to do so.

It’s also going to be the first time I offer the option to become a paying subscriber and support my writing. I really don’t know what to expect. I’m keeping my expectations low for now. However, I do hope that it is successful so that I can use the revenue it generates to invest in R&D for more mental health content, tools, and resources.

That said, if you’d like to be one of the first people to test out my new, upcoming web app and become a paying supporter of my writing, drop your email into the below form so that I can hook you up with it as soon as the MVP is ready.

Here’s the link:

https://k5dton220i4.typeform.com/to/TT1JAlaC

Until the next time, love, peace, and chicken grease!

Andy