We're Splitting Up

Why John and I have decided to part ways.

Yeah, yeah, I know—clickbait’s not cool. But Substack is, unfortunately, a social media platform, and this was too easy to resist.

John and I are still married. We live together, we write together, and, nine times out of ten, we still like each other. However, we have decided to depart from one another in one (hopefully) exciting way:

John is making his own Substack.

Actually it’s made already, and it’s called “Blown Off Course,” which is a reference to (1) a frequent metaphysical state in which we often find ourselves, and (2) Homer’s The Odyssey (which you may remember from TMBC’s Summer of Classics). You’ve already received John’s announcement post in your email inbox—you’re subscribed.

Yeah, yeah, I know—it’s not cool to subscribe someone to a Substack without their permission. But we thought that this was a little different, because John was half of Thinking Man, and aside from some new names and colors, Blown Off Course isn’t really anything new. John will still be writing stories, essays, deep-dives, and book club posts. The only thing changing is the logo. Think of it less like a new newsletter and more like Thinking Man was split in half (making the title of this post not all that inaccurate, after all).

Why did we do this?

The main reason is that we’ve written a ton of posts, and things were starting to get messy. We’d like for Substack to function as a writing portfolio, and that doesn’t really work out that well if Thinking Man is a compilation of both of our writing.

Also, we’re different people. Now, our Substacks will be reflections of each of us—not an average of both of our visions.

So, for the most part, John’s writing will be on Blown Off Course and mine will stay here. We’ll interact a lot and write guest posts sometimes, but for the most part, that’s it.

Hope to see you all there.