The switch-to-subscription is upon us
Here's what I can promise you if you move ahead with me
Throughline has been a spectacular place for me to work — the place I’ve always dreamed of finding, and there’s no way I could have possibly generated America’s New Map without the company’s support and creativity. It is — largely because of all those talented folk — the book I always wanted to claim as my legacy and I am immensely proud of it. If it were the only publication I ever managed, I would be good with that life’s output.
Trust me, I know exactly how grateful I should be to feel that way. I am a very lucky fellow.
I am equally proud of the exec-ed boardgame that we developed from the book, and the new slide deck we created and I am now delivering in engagements. Again, some amazing talents within Throughline led those efforts.
Then there is the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that I am presently building for the University of Maryland (as an Adjunct Prof) for worldwide access through EdX and Coursera (my thanks to Dan Forrester for pointing me in this direction). With U Maryland’s help, this will grow into an entire certificate program with time.
We have other pathways we are currently exploring, because, as a company, we anticipate a lot of future work surrounding the mitigation of, and — more saliently — the adaptation to climate change, along with (a) profound workforce changes thanks to demographic aging and (b) shifts in global supply chains thanks to all-of-the-above and globalization’s continued evolution. In sum, this was the first book put out as a Throughline collaboration but it won’t be the last.
These are amazing times in which to live and work. We as a society and world are desperately in need of positive stories and positive storytellers. These stories are hard to sell right now. They don’t constitute click-bait and they’re impossible to find when doom-scrolling. There are — at best — lone voices crying out in the wilderness right now.
Still, times like these are extremely energizing for me. Despite long being in my own save-the-world delusions, I really am more John the Baptist than a messiah type. I am quite happy to roam the planet trying to convert more souls to the message that salvation is at hand and that our current time of troubles is far from any history-stopping Armageddon.
Honestly, it’s times like these when I feel most confident in the power of positive storytelling. I was gifted that power almost thirty years ago under terrible circumstances: namely, when our firstborn (and then only child) Emily was diagnosed with a Stage IV pediatric cancer while we were living in the DC area. Luckily for this Packer diehard, we waged our fight at the Lombardi Cancer Center at Georgetown U. (a Catholic institution, no less).
Prior to Em’s cancer, my writing was good but not terribly alive. I had not found my voice, let’s say. But her diagnosis changed all that … well, after several months of near-descent into alcoholism.
You see, my wife and I accidentally conceived child #2 (Kevin) the very night before we got the cancer diagnosis (and yes, we are sure of that timing). We had no idea of what was coming but we had a sense of the potential and we decided quite consciously to bet on a good future — no matter what we’d find out from the docs about that lump under her skin (the initial diagnosis was an umbilical hernia but we were skeptical).
Two weeks later, after two surgeries (kidney out, metastasized tumors resected from one lung), the start of chemo, and our first radiation session, we got home. Vonne took the pregnancy test and informed me just as I got into bed after settling Em down from her non-stop vomiting.
To say I was blown away is an understatement.
We had been told, quite bluntly by our peds-onc (pediatric oncology) social worker that, odds were that, while Emily would likely survive the next two years, our marriage would likely not (the strong majority do fail). We could also expect bankruptcy (about a 50/50 prop). We were told that there are a myriad of ways we would individually and collectively “lose it” over the coming two years, with an extramarital affair being the most common. [We witnessed all of these realities in fellow-traveling families across the subsequent two years, so none of these warnings struck us as fantastic.]
I can’t relay the profound sense of betrayal and anger I felt about all of that at the time. I just had no idea whom to level it against. So I took the easiest route and blamed myself. My spouse Vonne did the same.
It was like we were adrift in a lifeboat or cast into a prison. We were instantly taken out of the game and told to stay in our penalty box for a couple of years. Life moved on; we were totally screwed.
I have almost no memory of world events across the years 1994-1996. I remember something vaguely about O.J. Simpson and that is it.
Sound familiar?
Honestly, in retrospect, the whole COVID-19 isolation bit was a big nothing to Vonne and I. After the Emily show (where we did most of her chemo in our living room), I felt like we could do that standing on our heads.
What I decided about four months into the Emily show, when Vonne’s pregnancy meant she couldn’t participate in the mechanics of the chemo administration and Emily’s care due to the danger of being exposed to cancer-causing agents (everything we put into Em and everything she put out was cancerous/hazardous medical waste), was that I was going to put down that beer bottle and step up like my marriage and future world depended on it.
But, see, I had all this pent-up anger and confusion and fear, and I needed some positive storyline to guide my day and my emotions. I needed to believe in a happy ending and so I started crafting one in a weekly 10-to-20-page-long newsletter sent out to dozens of family and friends in our network. I actually sent out a version to a select few through this new thing called email. I likewise faxed a copy to my dad’s law office where he had paper copies made and mailed to still more. It was all very haphazard but it was a lifeline to us.
What the “Emily Updates” did was to spare us the constant retelling of the week’s events to everyone in our network, along with keeping them suitably informed and feeling connected and thus able to contribute here and there. More importantly, though, the updates became our diary/novel/screenplay for the happy ending we so desperately kept trying to keep in our heads. We needed to be the heroes of our own story. We needed to elevate our performances into Oscar-worthy clips on a daily basis, because the alternative, as we saw all around us, was simply to lose it, underperform as parents/patient advocates/caregivers, and risk losing her and everything else that we imagined would be lost with her (marriage, possibility of future offspring, coherent family).
The Emily Updates were sustaining for us in a way that’s hard to describe. But, as a mobilizing/focusing/inspiring form of projected storytelling, there were invaluable. It’s like we were filming without a script but recording the screenplay as we went along. Personally, it got me up and out of bed every morning even as I knew the day would be a minefield of negative experiences, punctuated by me holding Emily down for this or that painful procedure (I played O’Brien to her Winston Smith in what seemed like an endless torture session in Room 101).
As such, the Emily Updates were where I learned how to write for real, like my life depended on it. They eventually totaled about 400,000 words before I ended it. We later self-published an edited version as a five-part ebook series that we basically give away online for pennies. We continue to get nice feedback on it from readers. We look at it (Vonne, Emily, and I) as a small token of thanks to the world for letting us back into the game essentially unharmed, save for Emily’s inevitable “late effects” as a long-time adult survivor (knock on wood).
Why tell you all this?
I deeply believe in storytelling as not just a life-affirming but a life-directing/saving mechanism. No Emily Updates and maybe no Emily, or a continuation of Vonne & Tom & Kev as a trio, or Jerry’s later birth, or Vonne Mei’s later adoption, or Metsu and Abebu’s later adoption. Imagining and actualizing that happy ending helped — in no small way — to determine my life’s path, as well as that of my entire family.
That’s how much I believe in the power of storytelling.
I believe that what Throughline and I collectively created in America’s New Map is a story worth telling — and spreading. Too much of what we’re exposed to today hammers our belief in tomorrow, almost crushing it. That sort of dead-endism may be fabulous for the end-timers, but, for the rest of us, it’s no good. We need a positive throughline — as many as we can get — to muscle through the next several decades of turbulence and emerge in whatever Earth 2.0 looks like at that point.
I and Throughline intend to pursue that storytelling here on Substack, building a community of likeminded folk in the process. For me personally, it’s a place to try out concepts as I develop them, and get valuable feedback.
But, since Throughline and I decided that this venue would constitute some portion of my overall workload, we need to monetize it — however modestly.
Hence, as of 1 December (Friday), I’ll start putting my daily posts behind a subscription firewall. Any “notes” I generate will remain free, as will a Sunday summary of the week’s six posts, along with my thoughts from what is always a very pensive day for me (even when the Packers are not playing).
So, here’s what you can expect for your $5/month subscription (or $50/year discount):
Daily newsletter posts delivered to your inbox Monday through Saturday (I don’t take breaks)
1 free post per week on Sunday
Coming soon: behind-the-wall access to a library of data visualizations & illustrations from the book
Chat capacity with me on Substack’s feature of that name.
Substack also encourages writers to offer discounts when current payees bring in other subscribers. We’ll look into that and consider it as well in coming weeks.
That’s the pitch.
If you can come along with us on this new adventure, great. I promise to provide you far more than your money’s worth.
Amazing, heart-wrenching, inspiring. Proud subscriber.