The Next Chapter for Celtics Chronicle.

Why I'm Leaving Substack

I know I’m prone to the occasional personal post. I usually try to limit these to 1-or-2 per year. Today is one of those days. If this doesn’t interest you, scroll down to the next heading for an update on the direction of the newsletter.

When I started trying to cover the Boston Celtics — if that’s even what it is I do — I did so with an unshakeable belief that I could overcome every obstacle in my way.

Nothing knocked me off course.

An ocean? Cool, I’ll get a plane. Time difference? I’ll turn it to my advantage. Lack of ‘sources’ or in-person access? I’m sure I can find an angle.

Whatever got thrown at me, I batted away.

A core belief I’ve always had is that when people point out flaws in your plans to reach a goal, it’s not that they’re being dismissive or even pessimistic; it’s that they’re projecting their own limitations onto you.

I knew what I wanted, and I went for it.

Then, life changed.

I’ve been incredibly open about the loss of my nan and the impact it had on me. Honestly, I’m more open with all of you than I am with those around me. I guess it’s easier putting it into words here than it is verbalizing it. I’m working on that.

For the first 32/33 years of my life, I operated with an unshakable self-belief. I threw myself into new ideas, goals, targets. My ADHD always ensured I could hyperfocus so long as that ‘something new’ held my interest.

Basketball has always held my interest. Every single day for more than 20 years. It’s a constant.

Anyway…

That night, on August 28, 2021, it stole that self-belief from me. It stole one of the very things that had been foundational to how I attacked life.

I resented that for a long time. In truth, you could see it in how I began interacting with people online.

Interestingly, it was a recent conversation with my wife that gave me a new perspective, because no, that unshakable belief has not returned.

If you’ve followed me, or read my stuff for a while, then you know I was a young-ish parent. My wife had our daughter like two weeks after she turned 21 — I had recently turned 23.

We had no education to speak of. No ‘skills.’ Over the last 10 years, we’ve built from the ground up. We went back to University, doing part-time degrees (which I pivoted from Computer Science to English and had to restart) while holding down a full-time job each and raising our daughter.

After graduating, my wife went back to University again to do her Master’s degree. Then again to become a teacher (so many hoops over here to qualify for that job!). This past year was her first time having her own class.

On the final day of the school year, I asked her what her favorite part of the job has been this year. Her response stuck with me.

“That I matter. I matter to the kids in my class, and to their parents.”

I sat with that for a moment.

‘Does what I do matter?’

I’ve always known I’m not changing the world. I write about basketball. Most of the time I’m aggregating news for my freelance gigs.

But does it matter?

I struggled with that for longer than I’d like to admit. And then, I asked myself: is mattering important to me? Or does what I do need to matter to me?

Turns out, the latter is true.

And if I’m honest, basketball matters to me a lot. The Boston Celtics matter to me a lot — they’re an enormous part of my life. So, if basketball and the Celtics matter to me, they likely matter to others, too. And who knows, maybe my work matters to them.

Maybe not.

That’s out of my control.

What is in my control, though, is making sure that I spend my non-freelance time building what matters to me.

What matters to me is twofold…

First and foremost, it’s doing this independently. Not as a side-gig. Not as something I do when I carve open an hour or two here or there.

Full time.

Independently.

That’s the goal. It’s been the goal. It will always be the goal.

The second is building a community. Finding people who love this team as much as I do, and, of course, who enjoy the work I do. That’s why this newsletter has been such a head f—k.

You see, when you’re trying to do this from thousands of miles away, social media plays a vital role. Having a presence is essential to success, even more so than those within the local market.

Truth is, I need social media, but with the caveat that I need it to continue finding future members of this community, both here and on YouTube.

That’s where some of the tension has been residing. When I joined Substack, it was a newsletter platform. Now, it’s a social media platform.

I have enough social media. I don’t need another.

If I’m going to find that unshakable self-belief again, then I have to find what matters to me. I have to approach everything through that lens.

Because when you align your goals with your beliefs, you can’t help but be unshakeable.

And that leads us to some minor changes.

For those of you who were subscribed to this newsletter last summer, you’ll probably remember the failed attempt to migrate to Ghost.

In truth, I never fully understood why I jumped ship.

Now, I do.

The subconscious sometimes pushes you toward things before you’ve had time to understand why.

Anyway, that migration was a clusterf—k.

I leaped into it with very little understanding of what I was opening myself up for. And, as many of you know, I was back on Substack with my tail between my legs about 6 weeks later.

What I never revealed is that over the past year, I continued to build a fully functioning Ghost site. I fixed a lot of the issues. I spent time building out the interface to look how I wanted it.

I’m stubborn that way.

Some of it was my own coding, some of it was AI — you know, work smarter, not harder.

As we got near the trade deadline, I sort of drifted away from working on that little side project. Substack was doing what I needed, and I’d just become a ‘bestseller.’

— That, right there. A ‘bestseller.’

— A vanity metric.

After that conversation with my wife, and the sort-of soul searching that followed, I realized two things:

1. The social media-ifcation of Substack had led the whole experience to stop mattering to me.

2. I was spending far too much time trying to do what I had seen others do to be successful. I wasn’t being 100% me.

I’m a huge fan of Jonathan Macri over at Knicks Film School and Marc Stein from the Stein Line. I’ve watched, from afar, as Jon’s built an outstanding platform that continues to skyrocket. And with awe at how Marc continues to be the epitome of excellence within this field.

Naturally, I’ve tried to take what I can from watching how they’ve done things.

However, what I did was try to copy their approach rather than adapt it.

Why? Because when the platform you're on is pushing AI slop and vanity metrics at you every single day, you start doing what you think you need to do in order to succeed.

But what is success if what you’re doing isn’t authentically you?

Somewhere between launching this newsletter and working to build it, I lost sight of the plan. I wanted more subscribers, faster. But what good is a big subscriber list if I’m not fostering a community that brings everyone together?

This is all a journey.

For me, that journey needs to take a new approach, and that starts with leaving Substack and returning to Ghost.

Why?

Because if I want this to work — not just the newsletter — but this push for independent coverage of the Celtics, then every detail of how I do things has to matter to me.

Limiting my social media channels matters to me. I’d rather go deep on two platforms than be shallow on a bunch of them. And, as I’ve noted, Substack, at this point, is a social media channel, and not one I have a great deal of time for.

Controlling how my stuff looks, from the sign-up page to the front cover of the site, and even the finer details of how the newsletter looks, matters to me. Having SEO control that brings Celtics fans to me, rather than me going to them, matters to me.

To me, that’s the other part of being fully independent: having total control, not just of the site, but also of the direction I take things, and the people I share a space with. Substack is no longer a shared corner of the internet; it’s a hostel where there are 10 to a room.

With that in mind, this will be the last newsletter to be sent out via Substack (all being well).

What does this mean for you?

To be honest? Not much.

If you’re a paid subscriber, your payments stay the same.

Everyone on the email list will still receive every newsletter I send (although you may want to check your junk folders for the next week or two — just in case)

A major change will be that you’ll need to log in to the new site once it’s live, so that you can leave comments. That’s literally the biggest issue you should run into. And you will receive an email from me once the site is up and running in the next few days.

The only other big roadblock will be that Ghost doesn’t have a built-in chat function like Substack does. Last year, I began building around that with a Discord channel, which is still live. I implore you to sign up. It’s free. It’s active. And it’s real-time discussions!

Join the Discord Here

If you’re only here for the update, you’re good now

A long-standing character flaw of mine has always been that I jump into things without thinking them through first.

I act before I think.

Sometimes, that’s a great trait to have, but on the majority of occasions, it leads to mistakes.

I’m aware of that personality trait/flaw, and because of that, I’ve weighed this decision up over multiple weeks. I’ve spoken with my wife, who is my rock and always engages with these conversations, despite it having no impact on her life in any way.

While my wife agreed that Ghost is the better bet for me, she did challenge me with one key question before ultimately sharing her thoughts: Why can’t you just use Substack and avoid the parts that you don’t like?

It’s a fair question, and one I assume some of you would probably have, too.

The answer is that if I’m having to mindfully ignore aspects of a site, then it’s not the site I’m supposed to be on.

If I truly want this to matter, then I need full focus. I can’t have full focus when I’m like, ‘let’s avoid the notes tab’ or ‘wow, there’s so much AI in my recommended reading today.’

There’s also the truth that I’ll probably run into issues with the new site that I couldn’t plan for in a test environment. I’m expecting and ready for that.

My reasoning may or may not make sense to you.

For me, though, it’s provided clarity.

And it’s that clarity that I hope leads to the goal of full-time independence at some point.

I welcome any and all feedback/ideas/comments

Join the Discord Here