I Now Write Into The Wild
My Substack Journey Begins, At Word's End
Today, January 1st 2025, I'm starting something new. Actually, a couple things: 1). A Youtube Channel and 2). This Substack, At Word’s End.
In my similarly titled, corresponding Youtube video (I Now Talk Into the Wild), the title works better. One of my favorite movies is 'Into the Wild' (also a book, of course, but this is one of the rare occasions I actually enjoy the movie more). A young man, Christopher McCandless, disillusioned with material society, abandons everything and heads across the country on foot to live off the wilds of Alaska. There's this beautiful scene, just as he's reached the border of his destination. He pauses and looks out into the wilderness, full of fatigue and exhaustion, but eyes bright with wonder and adventure. There's a sense of accomplishment to actually reaching this point about which he has dreamed, but also delight in the start of something new. He then steps into the last leg of his journey, and the words are written across the screen,
"I now walk into the wild."
The title works a lot better for the video. 'Talk' not only rhymes with 'walk,' but is a single letter away from the original, so one familiar with the original might even mistake it at a glance. "Write" does not rhyme with walk or talk, but it's what I'm here to do, so I'm rolling with it.
My journey has not been as physically arduous as Chris McCandless' (and, without revealing too much, hopefully it ends at least a bit different) but I, too, am on the cusp of an adventure at the end of a tiring pre-adventure to this point.
I have long wanted to be a writer since I was probably about 16 years old. At the time of this writing, I'm now twice that: age 32, and to be honest have nothing to show for it. In another aspiration, I wanted to be an academic since I was about the same age. I studied philosophy, but with a historical angle, something more along the lines of the history of philosophy, but also literature, and all the cool stuff that doesn't fit neatly into a category in-between. The 'written word,' one could say, more importantly the ideas and stories within and beyond those words. I wanted to be a professor by day, and storyteller by night. A modern day philosopher-historian-author Indiana Jones, just my adventures would take place in my head, written out for others to experience vicariously.
When I got to college, though, I struggled in multiple ways. For one, academia really likes to categorize and divide, or at least that was my experience. Academic disciplines and pedagogical approaches were seemingly not allowed to communicate when they clearly should, and the educational paths available (and by extension, career paths for an academic) seemed to force one to choose but a single direction. Not only did this not cover the breadth of my interests, but I found to be a simply insufficient, and therefore erroneous approach to learning and research. While I loved ideas, in all their forms from stories to philosophy, between and beyond, I became disillusioned with the state of things in the academic world here in the U.S.
Ideas are messy, they overlap, blur, and bleed. They don't neatly fit into academic department or publishing genre, caged to reside there and not roam beyond. That's how they seemed to be treated, though, and that's not to even mention the terrifying job market that comes with trying to navigate it all.
Additionally, school was always a difficult environment for me. On a personal level, I would later be diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at age 22, then ADHD recently at my current age (32). I didn't know it at the time, but the environment and structure of school wasn't exactly fruitful for me, especially without the approach and help someone with one of those disorders needs, let alone both, simultaneously. Those conditions have caused many difficulties over the years, the specifics of which are stories for another time, but they essentially stagnated any intellectual and creative progress I would've liked to have made before today, largely because they made any effort beyond mere survival and job performance insurmountable.
Disillusioned with academia, and struggling to perform the corresponding tasks as a student and young adult, also with mounting student-loan debt, I decided to take a break from college (I was at Shimer College, a great books styled college here in Chicago, which has since been absorbed into North Central College, if you're curious). I started to work in restaurants to pay the bills, and quickly found myself working in higher end, Michelin-starred restaurants where I had to learn the wine and wine pairings as part of the job.
That aspect of restaurants fascinated me. Wine is such an interesting subject: the breadth of knowledge across overlapping subjects to really understand it is unlike anything else I've seen in the world. It's an artform, and a lot of ideas I had studied in aesthetic philosophy could be applied to it as well, which really piqued my interest. My studies somewhat shifted to this, and I figured I'd see how far this wine thing would take me. That was about 10 years ago now.
I spent time working my way up in prestigious restaurants, learning from award-winning wine programs, while studying for wine exams to become a sommelier. Before long, I had the experience and certifications to work as a sommelier myself, which is mostly what I've done for the past six or so years, in some of the best restaurants in the country. I ran the wine program as the sole somm on staff (Wine Director if that makes more sense) at a Michelin-starred restaurant, and was even on the team of a restaurant that achieved the ever-coveted, but seldom-achieved three Michelin stars in late 2023, which, if you're unfamiliar with that world, is essentially the Olympic Gold Medal for restaurants. By many measures, I have a successful sommelier career going.
However, the service industry is fickle, unkind to the health of its workers. Work/life balance is a distant idea, meant for others. We know it exists, like how we know here in the U.S.A. affordable healthcare exists elsewhere, or that cricket is a popular sport somewhere on Earth (or so we hear, with suspicion, I might add); it's just not for us. In the best of times, those work environments are intense. The only thing I can compare it to that people seem to understand is that it's like how we think of Olympic athletes training and competing for a spot on the roster. There's an ever-bearing intensity, pressure, and competition many crack under. Perfection is the only standard. Some thrive, but it's rarely what I'd call healthy.
I went through a series of absolutely crazy job situations in those places, and I was simply burnt-out in the truest sense of the term. That, on top of my mental health struggles (half of which were still undiagnosed) made keeping up with the necessities at home impossible, or at least in any way one would consider healthy or even functional. Giving what little energy I had for my job left me with absolutely nothing. I was a husk of a human being. Burnt-out is probably putting it nicely. Maybe I will talk about it more sometime, but I was in a bad place, and I also felt so unfulfilled and disappointed in myself I still had nothing to show for writing all these years later, which really didn't help. Wine had started as an offshoot of my bookish interests, and it had ironically taken me away from them entirely.
I've spent the past eleven months working less hours than I have in a long time to try and get my health to a point I can get back to what I love: ideas, stories, art in general, but especially the written word. An ADHD diagnosis, medication, self-reflection, practice, help from others, and a self-imposed professional demotion, has gotten me to the point I can finally begin the last leg of my journey here (and the other place).
My presence on Youtube and Substack exists for two reasons, one of which is the usual 'I have things I want to share with people.' There is that, of course, but the corollary of that is it will force me to read deeply again. It's very different passively consuming books and media, than actively engaging with them. That's why I loved the idea of academia. The opportunity to not just read, but engage with books for a living?! And teach about them to curious people? Amazing! However, I can do that on the internet, too.
I will talk about books, ideas, stories, art, philosophy, and more here and on Youtube. This will force me to truly interact with these things again, and in turn this will catalyze my own creative writing. This is just as much a discipline and practice for me as it happens to be anything else; I like to think of it as mutually fringe beneficial to all. I'm not here to get a million subscribers or make a million influencer dollars. I'm here to share my thoughts on this journey, and if people want to join me and talk about it with me that's great, but this is just as much for me introspectively.
It took me a while to come up with the name for this space. I wanted one that evoked a sense of wonder, was intellectually serious, yet playful, to show I'm here to talk about big ideas, but in a creative way, and wasn't too restraining topically. A literary, historical, or philosophical reference would've been great, but also it had to be approachable to those familiar and not. A clever pun would be nice, as well as some ambiguity, to reel some in with an air of curiosity. I wanted something that could be interpreted in multiple ways if you pause and think on it. There were a lot of candidates, but eventually I settled on what you see here.
There's the classic phrase, 'to world's end,' (or 'at' or 'the' or 'beyond' or simply 'world's end'). It evokes a romantic sense of adventure and the unknown. However, if you change a single letter, you get a world of difference via a word difference, almost like if one were to talk into the wild as opposed to walk. Just as Chris McCandless stood, weary, at the end of one journey, there to begin his final adventure, full of both anxiety and excitement. Just as he began to walk into the wild, and on Youtube earlier I began to talk into the wild, here I am to write into the wild, At Word's End.
P.S.
I'm aware I didn't get too specific about what I'm going to write about on here, but also didn't want to resort to chapters. This was more of a personal essay detailing my journey to this point. The Youtube video has a bit more on the 'what' if you want to check that out, or you could just subscribe if you're intrigued and want to find out.
P.P.S.
If anyone reads this and wants to join in on, or simply follow along, some thought-provoking discussion about stories, art, and ideas please go ahead and subscribe. For the foreseeable future, I plan on making everything, comments and all, available to free subscribers. Paid subscribers will have my utmost appreciation, but I am apprehensive about putting things of intellectual value behind a paywall, so for now the paid subscription options are simply there if you think what I am doing brings value to you and/or the world, and you want to help support me on this journey. I have to work a full-time day job, so any help you can give will enable me to spend more time and energy writing and talking about things here At Word's End.