this was written a couple of months ago but hasn’t been published until now. i have only made minimal changes to the essay— enjoy.

more to come very soon :)

so, i’m back.

i’ve pondered endlessly about how to commence my re-introductory essay— surely, it should be flashy, right? an exciting start to signify a homecoming to writing. why not celebrate my return, and the return of this newsletter?

as i type that out, i cringe at the arrogance.

so, i will not make it flashy. i’m back, and i’ll leave it at that. in an attempt to not seem too arrogant, i hope this tone doesn’t sound too pompous, either; i’ve just never been of the performative nature, but i also don’t wish to completely disregard my hiatus.

whether my decision to write this was the result the hot and steamy shower i just took, or the grey dreariness of the evening, or the soft rain pattering upon my window, or the need to type out my mental jargon simply reached a climax that refused to be ignored, i cannot say. this essay will be very stream-of-consciousness heavy, as will future ones, but more on that later.

a lot has happened: i returned to the usa from spain, i graduated with my master’s degree, i started a new part-time job, etc. but again, boasting about my accomplishments was never a strong suit of mine, so to describe it quite vaguely (which i prefer), i’ve done things i’m proud of and done things i’m not proud of at all. in many ways, i’m the same person, but in others, completely different. some days I have a grasp on who i am, some days i have no clue. but that’s all of us— it’s nothing new, just human.

now that all of that is out of the way, i want to address something else that has been top of mind lately: the desire for a shift in this project. when i started Human+ a little over five years ago, i was in a stage of life where i was fascinated by all things self-improvement and practical philosophy (the latter of which formed part of Human+’s tagline). i always will be enamored with these subject matters, i think, as they were the first to open my eyes to the possibilities of being able to be something more, and genuinely were so instrumental in shaping my worldview during such formative years of my life. i mean, if you dig back in the archives, you’ll find a lot of step-by-step guides, which will give you an idea of the stage of life i was in at the time.

in more recent years, though, i’ve become less interested in learning “how to do” and more curious about “how to be”. while creating informational self-help content certainly has its place and always will, i feel that i’ve evolved past the need to tell others how they can improve their life, at least in the capacity i was doing. this is the same dilemma that so many creators in the self-help space experience sooner or later (i was already experiencing the early stages of this years ago).

the word “curious” honestly just sounds much more appealing to me than “directive”, and i think it always has. imposter syndrome mixed with a sometimes crippling perfectionist tendency and i have always been intertwined in some capacity. who was (am?) i to tell people how they should live their lives?

and i get that it’s people’s choice whether to listen to me or not, and i’ve always made that very clear from the start; i am not an expert on your life, nor do I claim to be. take only what you want from my writing, nothing more. but retrospectively, i always tried to maintain some hold on having authority over what i was talking about (hence the “MSPP” in my title). this vie for expertise led me to believe that i constantly had to have some kind of output, otherwise the façade would shatter and i would hardly be anything more than most others (at least in terms of being an “expert”). like the tides, my streaks of productivity ebbed and flowed, but never endured. i generally consider myself to be a disciplined person, but when my discipline is tied to maximizing creative endeavors, that very quickly becomes suffocating.

i guess this is all to say that i don’t want Human+ to be that anymore. I have always abhorred labels and putting myself in a box in general, so I won't anymore. Human+ will be an open journal of the recesses of my mind and soul. even writing this, it feels like an overdramatic whole lot of nothing. despite my attempt to brand this as a coaching and self-help newsletter, it hasn’t really been that for a while. i’ve come to realize that i will leave those topics for my other facets of my life, but i no longer wish to taint the purest expression of what i can do (creating) with productivity and performances. i think that i will include said topics as extras, either in the form of written pieces or Notes to Self episodes (which is my podcast series).*

but maybe this overly verbose essay is not so much to inform you, reader, of the future of Human+, but rather as a candid public declaration that i am allowed to change course and not write about the same things that interested me five years ago forever.

this is the part where i was going to speak about what’s next, but i quickly quelled that temptation. all i’ll say to that is that expect a lot more abstract, raw, and personal essays (aaaaand look at me sharing what’s next), which won’t set me apart from the tens of thousands of other publications here on substack, but that’s okay. expressing myself (even if to the void) is enough for me. i’m sure that philosophy and psychology will inevitably make their way into my writings, but more as an accessory instead of the focal point. again, none of this may come as a surprise to some of you since that’s already what i have been doing.

i will write freer than i ever have before, and create much more authentically than i ever have before.

with love,

alan

*if you have any kind of dilemma or challenge that you’re facing and want some perspective on it, feel free to write me ([email protected]) and i will be happy to share my thoughts and hopefully be of aid. (i promise to keep you anonymous and keep pertinent details vague when necessary.)

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