Hey! It’s been a while. Sorry.

I’ve been hustling, business-developing, Zoom-ing, moutain walking; web-designing, product-testing, conference-speaking, making 100s of packed-lunches; business-planning, ad-testing, trade-marking, veruca-treating; podcast-appearing, pitching, AI-training, picking up socks; you get the idea…

As a result ScrollAware is gathering exciting momentum and appears to have hit a serious nerve, with *big* brands and 🤞some high profile ambassador conversations in play. But my own nerves are frazzled. So much for a slow Summer.

I’ve felt like a priest at times, unwittingly eliciting countless confessions around bad habits and screen time fears. It can be depressing - horror stories abound - but it’s all validation that something’s gone seriously wrong and that we need more reminders to stop, pause and smell the roses.

In moments of overwhelm, it can feel futile and like pushing water uphill. Am I staking my reputation and using up all my network’s goodwill on trying to push against the gravity of global-trends and cultural change? Is this a business, or is it a ‘movement’? Can it be both? There are certainly enough awesome antidote products, and services to support more intentional living - the returns from which could fuel the movement - but equally, I’m increasingly realising that much of this is simply a life philosophy to focus on how much of the good stuff in life is actually free.

I feel like I’m trying to package and market an amalgam of personal philosophy (as revealed here) and old-world wisdom into something suitable for this age of overwhelm. To turn the clock back in many ways, but leveraging the modern tools of promotion that I find so icky: personal brand and the cult of celebrity, the primacy of social content and data optimisation, with the intensifying earthquake of AI-opportunity/ threat rumbling underfoot.

The ‘More Soul Society’ has launched this week in response. It seeks to offer the simple reminders that I need in order to to practice what I preach, packaged into a short, weekly, free missive. A ‘slowletter’ if you will, rather than a newsletter. It’s the start of the audience-building side of the movement to create a home for all the More-Soulers whose confessions I’m privy to.

Fancy it? Yes, it’s another substack… but a shorter, pithier one. Fewer elipses, semi-colons and rambling-Jess. And one that might trigger a mass ‘unsubscribe’ to so much other superfluous noise and out of which a movement could emerge to shift the pendulum back a little. It’s certainly a ‘could’ worth aiming for.

More mature Antidoters may find some of the contents obvious or trite (Hi Mum), but trust me when I say that much of this stuff will be depressingly new to many under 30s and/or partially forgotten by the generation above them. The prospect of sitting on a bench for 5 minutes to people-watch, sending a physical postcard or going out of your way to give a stranger a compliment can be hugely novel, unnerving concepts. Idleness, reverie, pondering and boredom are close to extinct states of being.

So I’m keeping this as short as I can(‘t!) as I’d rather you checked the below out than spent more valuable minutes reading this.

(And Antidoters will continue in the same vein, as freewheeling as ever. As and when I have some spleen to vent).

Please subscribe and share.

PS- I was tempted to auto-subscribe you all as the sales-funnel gurus would advocate - but I figured that would be counter to the philosophy. This has to be opted-in to by those that feel this and find it a breath of fresh air in over-optimised lives.

But bribery’s ok, right? I’ll send a handwritten postcard to anyone that gets 10 Soul Society sign-ups. A Smaart Pocket if you can get 50…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit antidoters.substack.com