So either I’m a lazy sod, or life intervened - those are the only conclusions that you might draw from my absence from Substack for almost a year. The reality is slightly more complicated, with a confluence of personal and professional realities tugging me away from writing.
In my ‘Welcome to Alone Ranges in 2024’ article, I wrote:
“2024 will be the year I start to transition towards a new mode of life. I plan to distance myself from the day-to-day responsibilities of running my business.”
Well, that has transpired in part. The second half of the year was dominated by conniptions and complications in my work life that overwhelmed me mentally and emotionally, to the detriment of so much else. I even ran away to Bali for a couple of weeks to work remotely and place distance between the challenges I was experiencing.
The rot set in with my house move in February last year. Moving house is always traumatic, although cathartic as well. I did three hard rubbish pickups with the local council and several runs to the rubbish dump. I downsized from a five-bedroom to a three-bedroom - and despite my best efforts to slough off possessions, my garage is still packed to the brim. If you need a large couch or a king-size bed, please let me know; I have both in the garage and many crates of ‘valuables’ and ‘memories’. Plus, exercise equipment, which is lovely, except there isn’t space to set it up. I intend to work up enthusiasm for another round of culling everything that is not crucial to my life.
It’s always a challenge to parse through possessions. There are crates with all manner of memorabilia for my three children. Amongst the ephemera are the plaster cast from my son’s first broken arm, my eldest daughter’s boxed-up shrine to Justin Bieber, and literally hundreds of pages of drawings from my youngest daughter. What to keep? What is valuable? What is just a sentimental keepsake that is good for a laugh when they do show and tell with their children many years from now?
I did come back to writing late last year with a series of articles on LinkedIn. I have a long-held interest in leadership, given my professional roles. It’s no secret that the world is full of people pretending to be leaders but lacking even the most fundamental necessary qualities - and worse - ignorant and uncurious to recognise their deficiencies. Many don’t grasp that management is not leadership. Too often, the Peter Principle kicks in:
“The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.”
I’m confident we all have met leaders in our work lives who embody this principle. Like everyone, I have moments of imposter syndrome and others when I feel confident in my leadership and decision-making. However, I am also curious and open to exploring where I lack a skill or attribute and am consciously working to redress my gaps.
The articles spanned ten qualities I believe all leaders should possess - and actively employ.
The qualities I have written about are what I believe are the signs of a good leader; they elevate you beyond simply managing to true leadership.
As I wrapped up the series just before Christmas, it struck me that the same qualities are those I believe good humans should have. I’ve incorporated that idea into my sketch plan for Alone Rangers in 2025.
My life today is different from a year ago. I am more determined and motivated to continue to progress in transitioning out of previous life modes and laying the foundations for the next few years.
Another handbrake on my writing was simply that I had not made a conscious decision to embed the habit into everyday life. I went into 2024 with no particular plan other than to ‘write some stuff about loneliness’. This lack of discipline and planning was no doubt a contributor to my drifting away from writing words regularly. A close friend pointed out my mistake recently - it’s strange because by nature I am a planner, I’ll spin up a spreadsheet to map out a project or timeline without compunction. Yet I had not applied the same discipline to Alone Rangers. I am now redressing that.
I have spent the last few weeks plotting out my purpose for my Substack and researching and preparing a content plan for the year. I’ve also familiarised myself with all the new features on Substack, especially Notes and Recommendations, so you’ll see me start to use these to create a more substantial and regular presence rather than just one or two articles popping up each month. I also hope this leads to engagement with my readers and others with shared interests. Whilst a part of my raison d’etre to write is a desire to explore my own life, I know anecdotally that many others share similar questions and the same motivation to consider their place in the world.
I’ve had some fun diving down a rabbit hole with Instagram, researching how to use it more effectively to spread the word about Alone Rangers.
What can you expect from Alone Rangers this year? Here’s my overall vision:
Alone Rangers is about the quiet spaces between loneliness and connection, the shifting nature of relationships, and the emotional complexities of modern life. Through personal storytelling, reflection, and exploration, I write for those who feel disconnected—particularly men navigating midlife, friendship, and emotional depth—but also for anyone who has ever questioned what it truly means to belong.
This is not about fixing loneliness. It’s about understanding, articulating, and making space for deeper, more honest conversations about how we connect with others and ourselves. If that resonates with you, you’re in the right place.
I remain very interested in the types of relationships we have. Our world is so bound up in stereotypical heteronormative monogamy, for example - yet so often, these end in emotional and financial damage, especially, and most often, to the female in the equation. It’s easy for suburban hetero couples with a dog, a baby and a mortgage to be blinkered to the span of the world around them. Yet many people live outside these narrow boundaries and arguably more successfully.
My intent from a year ago to explore wider boundaries remains at the top of my mind. So, moving forward, you should expect to see my writings on a range of interlocking themes. I’ll continue to explore loneliness and connection with a broader look at relationships of all types, the connections we form with those around us, and how taking action on these relationships can support a less lonely existence. Following that thought trail leads to considering how we can all be better humans. I will continue exploring stories from my life as part of my personal therapy, scratching at sometimes ancient scabs to help me understand my life and improve my small part of the universe.
I remain conscious of my privilege. I’m a cis middle-aged white male earning a decent salary, with a roof over my head, a car to drive, and sufficient resources to lead a relatively comfortable life, albeit I ain’t off to the Maldives in the near future, a couple of weeks in Bali is more likely. I can balance this a little with co-parenting an intellectually disabled young adult, so I have some inkling of the lived experiences of those who too often are marginalised by the mainstream and excluded by their circumstances from regular society.
So, what’s coming up on Alone Rangers in 2025?
I will take my ‘ten leadership qualities’ from LinkedIn and relate them to how we can all be better humans. You can expect articles looking at how we can all work towards being more present and growing authentic engagement in relationships with the people around us. I’m planning one ‘quality’ article a month.
I have mapped out a range of loneliness topics, starting with exploring why some people deliberately choose isolation as part of their job and how lighthouse keepers and astronauts can teach the rest of us about coping with loneliness.
I’ll endeavour to use Substack Notes to offer more ad hoc content and thoughts. I’m still working out how to use them, but I love watching my Notes feed on the Substack app, and I see Notes as a powerful tool that complements the longer format of my Substack articles.
I wrote my first post on Substack in 2021, and so much has changed in my life in the last four years, so I’d like to go back and revisit some of these articles, perhaps refresh the thinking and give you an update on how I might have changed in the intervening time,
Finally, I’m also researching and reading other writers' newsletters on Substack. There are many talented, thoughtful people writing on Substack, and I’d like to learn from them and hopefully engage with some of them.
Well, all of that’s the plan anyway! Stick with me!