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Why your substack is not a blog

August 16, 2026 By Notes, Wordpress 3 Comments

I love that people are writing on Substack, because it is almost a return to what blogging originally was: openly sharing connected and linked learning and insight with the world. 

A couple of things frustrate me about Substack though and these are things that really distinguish it from a proper blog:

1. It's really hard to comment.  In order to comment on a Substack post, I have to be a subscriber to a person's substack and I have to log in to do it.  That is a bit too much work for me. When I read an interesting post and I want to contribute in the discussion, that extra step of subscribing is sometimes a bridge too far.  I have dozens of unpublished comments sitting in various authors' comment boxes.  Blogs, like this one, may ask you to identify yourself – which helps with spam – but you don't have to do anything else.  I moderate comments here with Akismet, a plug in that rejects spam, and personal moderation. But I love the conversation here, when it happens.

2. Substack is its own ecosystem. While some social media sites are walled gardens inside of which content is protected and locked away (hello LinkedIn and Facebook and whatever is left of Twitter), Substack is at least a fenced garden. We can look through the fence at the content, which means it's more public than other places, but your content still lives inside its own wrapper.  At least with Substack you can export your content in a way that it can live inside an actual blog but in practice, the website is still an algorithm-driven collection of personal pages, very much like Facebook.  If your reading of online writing happens WITHIN substack mostly, you are getting served stuff based on algorithms.

3. The site encourages monetization rather than sharing. Of course you can make everything on your Substack free, but most writers I have read have at least some of their posts locked behind a paywall. I have no problem with that, and I believe that writers should be paid for their work. Substack is a publishing platform that allows people to be compensated for their work.  BUT, I cannot keep adding subscriptions not my life at the rate in which I encounter invitations to do so. Blogging, traditionally speaking, is about sharing.  It is about an open offering of ideas and conversation to the world, and it encourages connection and mutuality.  Again, writing for money is fine. But I do find myself lamenting what I will never be able to read.

4. We might never find it again. This one applies to everywhere people write. Yes, search is broken, but at least tools like Kagi make it possible to find material that is otherwise hidden by the big "search" engines.  If you are publishing on Facebook, LInkedIn or Substack only it's really hard to find your stuff!  And, especially with the first two, there is no real archive of material.  Furthermore, as my experience with Twitter demonstrated, some racist might come along and buy the site and change it for his own purposes, or delete it altogether and then everything would be lost.  If you can AT LEAST republish your writing on an open platform that you control – like WordPress – then it will always be yours.  

So this is a little cranky. But I found myself reading some substacks this morning that compelled me to respond to what was written. And I found my responses stymied by the subscription model, but my response too tribal to post here. Maybe I should just start using Mastodon for these kinds of replies.  Being out there and unseen is maybe better than not ever existing in the first place!

Visting and staying present

August 16, 2026 By Travel No Comments

Simon Goland describes an experience of travel that seems very common these days:

When my parents were finally able to travel and start seeing the world, their travel looked like checking off boxes of countries, places, cities, and museums. Arrive somewhere. Walk through a place without stopping much. Take some photos. Check off a mental box. On to the next place. And when I traveled with them, I too embraced that way of seeing the world.

I got good at it, actually. I could “do” a European capital in two and a half days and tell you, with some confidence, that I had been there. I had the photos to prove it. What I didn’t have – though it took me years to notice the absence – was any memory of my own body while I was standing in front of the thing I had traveled so far to see. I was present for the checklist. I was not present for the cathedral, the museum, or the funky little cafe nearby.

This speaks to something I have learned over my life, as I have been able to travel to all kinds of places for work and curiosity.  Nowadays when Caitlin and I visit a place on holiday we go to walk: multi-day walks, day trips, walks to places where we sit for a while and listen to the sounds.  Most of this travel happens in rural and wild places, and so even when we are in popular areas like Tuscany or Provence, we find ourselves alone in the quiet of the woods, the shoreline, or the fields that fewer people travel to.  We tend to avoid the cities. 

When I am in a city, instead of going to the tourist spots I like to try to find a football match to attend. Especially if I am in a place where the football is not one of the top leagues. Going along to a football match gives me the experience of what a community is like.  The travel from wherever I am staying to the stadium, the culture of the place, the food, the walk, the chants, the style of play. All are much more interesting indicators of where I am than the curated experience of a place through its formal cultural institutions.  It induces and requires the presence that Simon is talking about. 

As a result my language of travel has become very explicit. I don't "explore" a place or "discover" something, unless what I am exploring and discovering is something about myself.  Instead I am very clear that when I am away from home I am "visiting" a place, which places upon me a burden of respect for what is there. I try to learn enough of the language to be understood. I try to familiarize myself with places that visitors are not welcome, because many communities have fragile refuges from the influx of visitors and, living on an island that is a busy summer tourist destination, I know there are some places that the community needs to have for itself, for sanctuary and calm.

New eyes on Seattle

August 14, 2026 By Travel No Comments

“Jet Kiss” a sculpture by Mike Ross at the Capital Hill metro station

I’ve just returned from a week or work in Seattle. As I get older I am noticing how exhausting it is to be socializing a lot, and this week was full on BE VERY PRESENT WITH PEOPLE energy followed by a need to spend time alone in reflection and restoration. I slept deeply every night I was there.

Sometimes when I do this work I find myself at a hotel on the outskirts of town, confined to the vast expanse of car-forward infrastructure that we are cursed with in North America. It makes wandering exhausting, let alone dangerous, and so one just camps in the hotel room or at a nearby franchise bar or coffee shop, pretending to experience human community in a mall owned by private equity.

But in Seattle two things worked against this. First, it is summer, which in this part pf the world means you go outside regardless because warm sunny and dry days are the exception, not the norm. And second I was ensconced in the U District near the university, which is quieter in the summer with no students around. So it all behooved me to take my chance and spend the few hours for I had for solitude after work and before dark out of doors.

I have been visiting and travelling to Seattle for decades. It’s only 250 kms or so south of here, but the border makes it further and longer. Pretty as the drive is for a lot of it, it’s exhausting to do after a week of work. US-Canada borders are not fun places at the moment, and the traffic in both Seattle and Vancouver is, in plain terms, a nightmare.

However, these days there is a constantly improving light rail system in the city and so for the last two trips there I flew from Vancouver. Where I stay in Seattle is kitty corner from the U District light rail station and suddenly it couldn’t be easier to get around the city. This time I noticed how much it changed my experience of the place.

The U District station is 45 minutes from the airport, which lies on the far side of downtown. I arrived on Sunday and dropped my luggage at the hotel and then jumped right back on the train and headed downtown to go to my first ever National Women Soccer League game. The Seattle Reign which includes a local Canadian player Holly Ward, were hosting Angel City at Lumen field, Seattle’s massive NFL Stadium. There were about 7000 people there, a generally quiet crowd, with a drum core marching band up above the supporters section and a game capo trying to get chants going in teh south end.

The match was entertaining, resulting in a 2-2 draw, both teams needing to adjust without their superstars, Jess Fishlock of Seattle and Jun Endo for Los Angeles. Tactically it was fascinating to watch teams trying to solve each other. My eyes were on the creative play of Mercado and Sentnor who were given the job of disrupting each other’s defences with surprise, trickery, vision and skill.

After the match I wandered over to Pioneer Square and with my knack for finding decent cheap eats, I went to Numero Uno Pizza. This looks like a regular gritty urban pizza slice place, but they have a half secret menu of Turkish flatbreads like pide and lahmacun. And so that’s what I had, a lamb lahmacun with a small green salad.

The second night I was out I again hopped on the light rail and headed to Capital Hill where one of my work colleagues was playing a recreational softball game in Cal Anderton Park, which is a whole scene. Seattle really is a whole scene in some many ways. There are so many subcultures that it’s not uncommon so see them reduced down to the level of individuals doing their own thing. While there was a softball game going on, there were folks elsewhere playing soccer, and groups of people hanging out with their besties. It was busy, diverse, and wild. The youth subcultures in Seattle have a distinctive combination of performative insecurity crossed with a fierce we-don’t-give-a-shit attitude. When I was there in June, during the World Cup, there were many Bosnia-Herzegovina supporters staying in my hotel, and they were completely flummoxed by the scene. It was funny to watch.

At any rate, my colleague’s game was a good excuse to wander down to that neighbourhood, which also afforded a chance to go to Elliot Bay Books, one the finest bookstores in the region. After spending a hour there, I grabbed a chicken tikka at Cafe Ashiana, a virtual food truck tucked into a small building down below Broadway. It’s an Afghan/Pakistani place, quiet at 9pm when I got there but absolutely delicious.

Tuesday night, it was another visit to a colleague who has a night job working at Bamboo, a sushi restaurant in the mall-as-if-it-were-a-village that is University Village. The restaurant was a 20 minute walk from campus to this strange outdoor mall. It was a lovely warm evening, and I sat on the patio and had a dish of crispy rice with spicy albacore tuna and a house roll featuring seared salmon, seasoned crab, tempura asparagus, white truffle ponzu, kewpie dill aioli, and crispy leek. Yum.

On my final evening, after our team went out for ice cream to celebrate our work I went to Magus Books, which is a fantastic used book store, bought an Ottolenghi recipe book, a collection of Alistair Macleod stories and a Blues harmonica method book and then walked up to Cedars where there was a Wednesday night butter chicken special.

Mornings, my walk down to the campus had me stopping at Cafe Solstice which pulls an EXCELLENT espresso (even by Seattle standards) and their breakfast wraps are “Canadian sized” portions which is appreciated. It’s now become my go to place for my morning solo prep time. In the early morning in summer, it’s quiet. Probably not like that at other times.

I document all of these places because for the first time, I have finally experienced Seattle as a walkable, accessible city. The light rail has changed everything, shrinking the city to a more human scale for those of us who are visiting.

The gentleness after the storm

August 14, 2026 By Uncategorized No Comments

The view from my porch this morning, looking east to the line of storms that obscure the sunrise.

It’s a very still and quiet morning here on Nexwlelexwm/Bowen Island. A line of thunderstorms passed over the island a couple of hours ago, and as they have slowly made their way east, there are lingering rumbles coming from up the inlet. Lightening is striking the mountain tops of the Brittania Mountains. The ground at my house is a little wet, so at least some rain is falling in this little system, and I hope that means that there are fewer fires likely to start as a result.

In the quiet of an August Friday morning, very few commuters are rushing for the ferry. The Queen of Capilano slid into Snug Cove a few minutes ago. There is no wind at all, nor any kind of swell in the bay, so the sounds of the morning are five or six nuthatches in the forest around me, some chickdees in the Saskatoon bushes along our garden edge, crows far off on the ridge top maybe bothering an owl or an eagle, and the plaintive rumbles of thunder rolling down Howe Sound.

The air is very damp, and the sky to the east is pink as the sun has risen behind the wall of cumulonimbus clouds that are languidly crossing the region. Away to the south it’s hard to know where the blue of the sky begins and where the grey sheen of wildfire smoke ends. The atmosphere is a blended mix of watervapoour and woodsmoke.

Me, I’m pouring my morning coffee, home from a trip to Seattle to work with the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance and their community- and University-based partners. We delivered an Art of Hosting there, which forms an important part of the way the Evans school promotes community and democratic engagement.

My mind is tired from the week. Holding the evolving needs of the room against a core set of learning objectives while alos pushing ourselves to do new things is exhilarating in the moment, but produces a rush of release when it’s over. Travelling home yesterday was fraught with the usual busyness of a drive through Vancouver and the chaos of a ferry schedule bent out of reality but the summertime. Sleep was sweet, and long.

The next three weeks will be about seeing out the summer with rest, reading and retreat. I have a lot of writing to do, processing this year’s worth of learning. I have learned a lot this year about my practice and have taken my facilition/hosting work into deeper territory. This has been the year in which the combination of anthro-complexity, the Art of Hosting, Participatpry Narrative Inquiry, pedagogy, and coaching have all all finally blended into a rich set of practices for the work I do. It’s as if a distiller took a sophisticated blend of whiskies and let them age together for 15 years. This year has been the first bottling of that new expression. It probably represents the single biggest learning that I have Dione in my practice since 2012.

Over the year of strategic work and teaching I have pushed myself in practice more than I have done for a very long time. I have kept detailed notes along the way, in an effort to observe my work, and make sense of what different choices and actin=ons have meant. The next few weeks will afford me the chance to reflect on mornings like this, combing through the field notes and writing out what I have learned. It will all be shared here, in snippets and in long form essays, unpolished, but with an eye to dropping them in public for public reaction and response and polishing and challenging.

The world is a rocking boat

August 6, 2026 By Being No Comments

From volume IV of On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle:

The world is not a calm sea, where all you have to do is refrain from rocking the boat… The world is a rocking boat, a ship in a storm, and when you’re capsized, that’s why. Because the world is a place that throws you overboard.