What is Survival Signal?

I am a writer. I have been writing my entire life with varying degrees of success. Some low points (unpublished novels, unanswered pitches) and some high points (running some esteemed publications and building a lasting and successful content strategy business where I ghostwrite for Fortune 500 companies and their executives).

I have written things my entire life and went to journalism school (which is more of a signal of intent than any necessary part in this process).

I have watched several fundamental shifts in publishing (the blog revolution, podcasts, newsletters and self-funding publications), consistently ruing my own inactivity as others built up significant readership and, hopefully, revenues. 

In my weakest moments, I’ve treated the democratization of publishing like a curse. Not that there are not many people who I acknowledge that can write better than me. And certainly not that historic gatekeeping has kept many amazing voices from marginalized communities from wider exposure. But, mostly, that the world is now filled with prose, and I often struggle to find my place in it. 

Also:

• I am burdened by publisher brain, which means you build a complex scaffolding of content calendars and audience maps before you write one word. Today’s publishing environment is much more move fast and break things.

• And my interests are varied. Every day, there’s a new idea or concept i want to pursue and it gets hard to alight on the one I feel most passionate about.

• I have soft launched and abandoned many types of publications before, giving up quickly for reasons I cannot quite articulate.

• I’m scared of failure.

• And, I am brutally honest, I want to be compensated for what I put my blood, sweat, and tears into. So I always have in the back of my mind - am I building something people will want to pay for. 

So, what are you leading up to? 

This is Survival Signal, a publication intended to help people find meaning and joy in their careers. Its North Star is for people working outside of salaried positions, but it will hopefully be of service to any workers who is trying to navigate an increasingly complex world.

But it’s mostly about help. How to help, how to get help, and how to not think about help like it’s some scorecard you need to come out on top of. I promise you it is not a zero sum game. 

I’ll be… 

• Interviewing people who have something to offer

• Sharing my own personal stories

• Opening the floor for people to share how they’ve helped or been helped

Aligning under the banner of “help” enables me to take things in slightly different directions as the help required shifts.

It feels the world ahead of us is brutal - voracious corporations callously laying off people because of their mistakes. Technocrats looking for every opportunity to replace labor with AI. The unblinking and widening chasm between the ruling class and the rest of society. The only way workers will survive is by depending on each other and build a future where they don’t get left out.