On Thursday 24 July 2014, 57 unwitting humans accidentally signed up for the first edition of what I called ‘the world’s very first adventurous comedy political mailing list thing’.
After slightly refining my focus over the years, I now introduce myself like this:
👋 My name is David and I’m a writer, outdoor instructor and cyclist-at-large with Thighs of Steel. I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
I’ve been doing that since December 2016, when I committed to writing a story every week, first sent via Mailchimp, and now on Substack, starting with this story about the political backdrop to a fire in a refugee camp on Samos on 18 October 2019.
Three years on, there are now 469 of you reading my newsletter, which is wonderful. Thanks for being here.
For the 412 of you who haven’t been around since the beginning, here are the most read stories from each year of my writing:
- 2014: Impossible Lives: Without Money, Without Passports, Without Google (38 readers)
- 2015: No Desk, No Computer & No Clothes! (51 readers — that’s growth for ya!)
- 2016: “I’m experimenting and my body is a great place for me to experiment.” (63 readers)
- 2017: I can’t phrase this in any way that’s not spammy (only 60 readers — not worth reading now either)
- 2018: I believe in (Wo)Man’s Search for Meaning (67 readers)
- 2019: Mailchimp: For the love of ourselves 💚 (97 readers). Substack: Scheming and Dreaming (440 readers — I guess they have a different way of counting)
- 2020: Catastrotunity (501 readers)
- 2021: Meet your mentor (675 readers)
- 2022: Man Sloth Mode (613 readers)
Now here’s to another eight and a quarter years!