I Need A Little Help

I hate to ask, but I'm out of time.

The photo is a few years old, but this is my family, including my granddaughter.

Long-time readers of this Substack know that it began for me as an outlet to begin writing about my struggles with faith.

When my full-blown crisis of faith came to a head in 2021, and I had to step down from 1P5, the very successful Catholic publication that I started, I had no idea how hard the next few years would become.

I foolishly thought that I could replicate that success and build something new, just as quickly as I had built 1P5, which was successful right out of the starting gate.

But I didn’t realize how much interior work I had to do.

My first year after 1P5, I still had an income, as I was retained as a consultant for the new owners of the business. But I fell quickly into a deep depression. Worse than anything I’d ever experienced. There were days when I was borderline catatonic. I couldn’t form sentences. I would break down and start crying at small provocations, that hinted at deep wounds within.

I began doing things that could bring those issues to light. Against every expectation, I found that acupuncture — with a specific focus on breaking up emotional blocks — dredged up a lot. (I only went to appease my wife. I’m glad I did!)

But I had so much to work through. Complex trauma, spiritual abuse, a horribly negative self-image, anger and betrayal and a long list of my own personal failings I didn’t know how to grapple with. A broken relationship with our oldest child (now on the mend), estrangement from my family, marital difficulties I had created through my own dysfunction, and a world of people who seemed to either pity or revile me for turning into a critic of the Church I had once so fiercely defended.

My wife, seeing that I was pretty much non-functional, did what she does and took the reins. We were burning through savings, and I was a zombie. So she moved us from New Hampshire, where we’d retreated, back to Arizona. She put the kids back in their old schools. And she invested the money we had left into an assisted living home that could take care of her father, whose dementia and health issues had grown so bad we could no longer keep him in our home.

That assisted living home was a double-edged sword. He died there, receiving the care we wanted him to have. It paid our bills as I tried to get back on my feet. But we quickly learned that assisted living is a cutthroat industry, full of turnover, betrayal, deceit, poaching, and more. There’s a lot of money in taking care of the elderly and the dying, and where there’s money, there are unethical practices.

We have had an endless succession of problems with the home, and we’re trying to do what we can to save it, but it’s moving us in the direction of bankruptcy.

This Substack is growing all the time, but it’s a slow burn. It will take years at the current pace for it to provide a living wage. I’ve been trying to increase paid subscriptions, but that can only go so far, so fast.

I’ve recently learned, through a diagnostic test, that I am very likely on the autism spectrum. This helps to explain why I am very good at the things I’m good at — like writing — and terrible at other, more practical things. I struggle personally and professionally with things that come naturally to others. I have issues with executive function. I have severe social anxiety, and despite a high IQ and competence at my limited skillset, it is very difficult for me to find work. It doesn’t help that I am a middle-aged white male with a large body of controversial work online. Formerly religiously conservative and still politically conservative, it’s very hard for companies to put me in the kind of public-facing communications positions I’m best at. And I’ve been out of the workplace for over a decade. I’m not up to date on current corporate culture. I haven’t gotten a single reply on an application to a professional position, and the number of jobs I’m actually qualified for when I’m of an age to be at a senior level in any given company is small.

So while I’m still open to going the traditional route, I’m doubling down on my online work, because I’ve already proven I can succeed there. I cannot overemphasize how much I love doing the kind of writing and commentary I do, and the engagement numbers tell me I’m good at it. I just have to figure out how to properly monetize so I can afford to continue.

I’m going to be starting a new business teaching the things I’ve learned about successful online writing over the 15 years I’ve been doing it. I’m finishing up the first of several courses and e-books, and will be launching a new weekly newsletter about this — which is why I’ve been so quiet the past week. I’m confident it will bear fruit. There aren’t a lot of actual working writers teaching people this stuff. It’s mostly marketing guys who only ever…write about writing.

My wife has been selected to start a new office for a real estate team back in Virginia that has been very successful, and she’s heading up a local chapter of a nationwide real estate investment group. She’s got so many leads right now she barely has time to get to them all. She’s actually at a listing appointment to sell someone’s home right now. But that’s all pipeline. It will bear fruit in a month or two, but the end of the month is coming fast.

The truth is, we’re just too far behind to catch up in time. We’ve lost our car insurance, so I can’t do my evening work doing food deliveries. We’re about to have both cars repossessed if we can’t get up to date. I’ve lost my health insurance, and I’m at an age where I need to start having more regular doctor visits. We’ve got to make rent in less than two weeks, and we just don’t have it.

Some of you have been incredibly generous over the past couple months, and I’m not asking those of you who have helped so much to do more.

So I’ve decided to do a “kickstarter” for our family. We are looking at so much opportunity and abundance in 2025, but we’re just not there yet. We need a little boost to get us there. And I promise to pay it forward when we are able to.

If you can help in any way, even a little, I would be so grateful. It’s been an incredibly stressful time, but I’m focusing on improving my mindset, staying positive, and doing the best work I can as I continue to pursue success.

None of this could be possible without you. Thank you so much for reading, and for your support.

If you can help at all, you can do so right here.