It’s been a year since I started this Substack. It began as a personal journal for reflection, but it became much more to me. I was surprised how it sparked ongoing conversations with both old and new friends that spanned a wide variety of topics, including family dynamics, friendships, the current political environment, events in the Pacific Northwest, and even geeking out on technology topics.
I’ve seen other writers share their experiences on their “blogiversary” with a standard Q&A. I thought I’d share my answers, too!
What inspired you to start blogging?
I started blogging as a way to collect my own thoughts and put them into words to “do” better. The principle of “Thought, Word, Deed” is that there is a sequence to actions. First, one has to crystallize the right thoughts, and then put them into words. Once expressed, one is in a better position to act on those words accordingly. So, journaling can lead to better action. But the problem always starts with maintaining the discipline to convert those thoughts into words!
I thought that by making a personal journal (not so personal) by posting it for everyone to read, I could use an audience to hold me accountable to keeping up the habit of putting thought to word!
I started with a stake in the ground that I would write twice per week — basically once per week to reflect for myself, and once a week to write for others.
How did your goals or expectations evolve over the year?
I found the very personally reflective posts to be a very heavy lift. They were good for me to do. I must also admit that there are a few of them that live nowhere but my Google Drive because Marsha and I chose not to have me publish them. I still wrote some very personal posts from time-to-time throughout the year, but I decided early on not to do them every week.
For the writing I was doing for others, I originally thought the focus would be on retirement itself and lessons learned from earlier in life. After all, I called the Substack “Retired Techie in PDX”. Even a year later, there are still topics on my “to do” list that I haven’t gotten to! Some of these included:
Reflecting on the time I spent in Seattle (2001-2006) after leaving Silicon Valley the first time
My very first consulting gig ever (a favorite!)
My experience with a dementia long-term observational study at UCSF
The mechanics of handling the death of a parent
Angel investing
A deeper dive on alternative investments and direct private lending
And more…
However, each time I’d sit down to write, I’d get inspired to write about something else, so I left these (and many other ideas for posts) just sitting on a list in Google Docs. It seems like there’s never any dearth of things I feel like writing about!
What were some of your favorite posts or moments?
I think all of my favorite moments were associated with posts that opened up new avenues of conversations with friends.
Some posts which inspired these moments included:
Dementia is hard. Publishing this one brought so many private conversations with others who shared similar experiences with loved ones.
Reflections on past jobs at Oracle, Visioneer, and Latitude. These posts reflecting experiences earlier in my career sparked conversations with former coworkers and friends that I hadn’t been in regular contact with for years.
Lessons on the changing meaning of life and juggling the “five balls” of life. These posts opened up conversations with younger people, far away from retirement, looking to avoid the mistakes I made.
Health insurance plans for early retirement. For those new to retirement, this one provided a very accessible set of conversations that didn’t require much of an emotional lift. Of the practical posts, I think this one still gets the most views. I was surprised by the traction on this one because I just assumed there were so many places for people to go on the Internet to describe health plans. However, friends approaching retirement kept telling me that it was helpful to know what health plan I actually chose and why, rather than just what the choices were.
My first political post. While I’ve only done about a dozen posts on politics so far, the response to the first one encouraged me to continue to express my views here. These posts prompt good discussions with friends and provide a good outlet for me in these tough times.
Keep the conversations coming!
What surprised you most about the blogging process?
Probably the biggest surprise was how much writing I chose to leave on the “cutting room floor.” I realized in writing these that it was easy to veer off topic, which works OK conversationally but not that well in writing in the essay format I chose to write in.
It’s one reason why I am looking to change the format to audio and spanning multiple topics, rather than just a single essay per post!
How did your writing style or voice change?
I don’t think I changed my writing style or voice enough over the course of the last year. I think I could do better.
Even six months in, I wrote,
“At the same time, I can now see there’s a gradual erosion in the readership here, even with the slightly growing subscriber base. The number of views and the email open rate for this Substack has been starting to shrink.”
I started this Substack with a very high open rate and a lot of views for a relatively small subscriber base.
However, after as little as six months back in February, I found that the number of views to the site plateaued even with a growth in email subscribers. The open rate of the newsletter was starting to fall.
Now, another six months later, in August 2025 I continue to see that the number of views hasn’t really grown much, even with a much larger subscriber base. The open rate continues to fall.
So, while I’ve written here that I am working to focus less on the metrics themselves, I do want to focus on making this Substack more accessible and easy-to-digest.
What role did community or collaboration play?
Absent the metrics, there was a "virtuous cycle” here. Conversations with friends encouraged me to write more. And writing more spurred more conversations with friends!
What challenges did you face?
I think my biggest challenges were attempts to follow Substack recommendations for engagement. My subscriber chat page never really took off. Neither did my referral page. While I appreciated the responses I got to my survey in February 2025, there were only 16 of them.
In the end, I needed to remind myself that I started this as a personal journal and not for skyrocketing metrics (although admittedly that would be rather satisfying). Anyway, I decided to just put these features to rest and just focus on the content.
What have you learned about your audience?
I’ve learned through offline conversations, emails, and texts that there are a lot of people who really read the content but just don’t comment online or answer surveys. I really appreciate this out-of-band communication.
Some friends also admitted to sometimes just scanning the articles because they appear in email at a time when they are trying to do something else. This is one reason why I plan to also be in people’s podcast feeds or YouTube viewing, so I can be where they are when they want to more passively engage with content.
How did blogging affect your personal or professional life?
At a personal level, the Substack gave me a place to formalize my reflections. In the end, I still believe in “thought, word, deed,” and I believe that the process of crystallizing my thoughts into words led to better actions.
With friends, it gave people a reason to reach out to me. I am grateful for this. It has also prompted some reunions, too!
At the same time, I think it’s helped me professionally, too. I think I’ve stayed more top-of-mind with friends who are still working to involve me in their projects. Of course, my primary mode is retirement (and “dicking around!”), but it’s nice when people think of me!
What are your goals for the next year?
I am looking forward to changing formats to a podcast. Candidly, I set myself a “countdown timer” in posts to start changing formats starting with the next one. Still, I have to admit that I haven’t really done all the work to prepare for this yet! Life has gotten in the way a bit. (Retired life can get busy!) I’m still planning to try to put out podcasts once a week, but I haven’t done a good pilot run yet!
Any advice for someone starting their blog today?
Yes! Use Substack. Don’t bother to set up the tech yourself. If you use Substack, you can just start writing on the first day and get going.
My first blog in retirement (time-restricted.com) was done in WordPress. I had to do work to pick templates and install the right plug-ins to make it work right. Even as I write this, I am a bit tired of doing the IT to keep it running. Just about a month ago, one of the auto-updates failed for an installed Wordpress plug-in. I wasn’t monitoring this, and Google Search Console actually returned to me errors that the site was down.
After a bit of Googling, I had to go in with PhpMyAdmin to reset an underlying database value to disable all the plug-ins, install a better plug-in to replace the misbehaving one, and re-enable all the other plug-ins. The site is working again, but it just wasn’t going to happen for me.
I love that Substack takes care of all the IT for free. Of course, I’m a bit worried about the future enshittification of Substack, but this is why I bought my own domain name. I can always take control of this blog again if I ever get sick of this platform.
Feel free to reach out if you want to start your own Substack. I don’t really have any “secret sauce” here, and I’m totally willing to share anything I know about this!
Thanks again for joining me on this journey over the last year. While I do intend to still use this format of blogging from time-to-time, I’m going to try to focus the second year on podcasting.
By default, I’ve made everyone who is a subscriber to “Retired Techie” a subscriber to the “Retired Techie” podcast emails. However, you can manage your subscription using the Substack web app.
In addition, you’ll be able to subscribe to the podcasts using Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Instructions to follow!
The podcast email notifications will come from reretiredpdx+b-sides@substack.com. Please remember to add this email address to your address book or “Safe Senders” list. I’ve gotten reports that emails from that address have ended up in people’s Junk E-mail folders.
See you next week!