A Thank You, a Welcome, and a Gift

It's been an incredible month, thank you all for being here and reading

Gratitude

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all my new and old subscribers. It’s been an incredible, unexpected, transformational month. I can’t thank you all enough for supporting my writing. It’s almost hard to believe. At the start of June I had around 20 subscribers — now we are approaching 150. When I started writing here it was an unthinkable number. That’s a decent size auditorium full of people. Together we could fully crew an 18th century merchant ship!

The interactions with all of you over the last month have been nourishing, heartfelt, engaging, and interesting. I feel like I have had the chance to talk to most of you, and if I haven’t yet, I look forward to soon. I try to read and comment on what you publish and love the conversations it generates, and the life insights you have provided me with. And I love the generous, deep comments you have left on my essays. It’s been a gift talking to you all and getting to know you. It feels like a community here. A community of people who observe, feel deeply, and appreciate each other and the world, even though (or maybe because) we have faced difficult times.

The gratitude and joy of seeing something I wrote loved and quoted because it has connected with your experiences can’t be described, you are all so kind and generous. Thank you.

The author deep in writing his book

A Welcome to New Faces

There are many new people here, around 80 from last week alone. Thank you for joining, and a very warm welcome to Soulfaring.

Briefly about me: I am Alexander, a biomedical scientist-turned-writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. A year ago, I walked away from my research career due to burnout and rebuilt an old, broken sailboat (named Kismet). Then we navigated the ancient, beautiful Scottish West Coast, finally unshackled. Ultimately the whole journey was a way for me to get to know myself again.

This writing journey is the extension of that exploration, of recovering from burnout, mourning the loss of a dream career, falling back in love with the world by getting closer to nature and myself through sailing.

And now I’m on a sabbatical of sorts. When I quit my job due to burnout my only plan was to sail and write until my savings ran out. I have written a memoir (of which I have shared excerpts here) which will be published one way or another, and I launched this Substack to see if anyone would be interested in my story of navigating burnout, rebuilding a sailing boat, sailing around Scotland and reconnecting with myself and nature. And it turns out these things resonate, and I’m incredibly grateful.

Launching Voluntary Paid Subscriptions (no paywalls)

I want to keep writing. It has done something in my soul that I can’t quite explain. For the first time I feel like I am exactly where I want to be. Even if it stops here, with the current subscriber count, just all of us together, this is what I will keep doing. Writing essays, working on books and engaging with this wonderful community.

But if I could do it part time, or (dare I even say it out loud?) full time, it would be a dream. So I’m turning on a paid subscription option. All my writing will be fully available to all subscribers as always. Everyone will be able to comment and engage, I’m not locking my writing behind a paywall. I’m simply turning on the option for a subscription IF you would like to support my work financially, and if you feel my writing has given you something and you want to subscribe to enable me to keep doing it the way I have been until now.

I don’t have much to offer except my writing and amateur photography. But I’ll try to make it worth your trust in me.

The subscription options are as follows:

Monthly: £4

Annual: £35 (£2.91 per month)

Founder: £200

A note for mobile app readers: If you upgrade directly inside the app, there may be additional platform fees. To get the cheapest £4/£35 pricing, subscribe through a web browser instead! Either way, you get full access to everything, and you support me equally.

Subscriber Perks

At the cost of a coffee you’ll support my writing on Substack as well as my books, and additionally you’ll get access to a paid subscribers chat called The Captain’s Quarters on Substack. The idea is for it to be a day-to-day chat where we can have a dialogue as if we were hanging out on Kismet. Within the chat are the following rooms:

• The Ship’s Library is a space to have discussions on the books we are currently reading.

• The Lounge is a place for a tea or a dram of whisky and a chat about life.

• The Navigation Desk is for discussions on the day-to-day work behind our writing projects and trying to get them published.

A paid subscription directly supports my writing. To express my gratitude for helping me keep doing this there are some additional early bird perks for those who subscribe first:

• The first 100 paid subscribers will (if they wish) be acknowledged in my book.

• The first 20 paid annual subscribers will additionally get 3 months comped (added) as a thank you gift for your support and belief in me.

The £200 Founder subscription would hugely support my work, and my gratitude to anyone who chooses it will be boundless. You will officially be part of Kismet’s crew. You have an open invitation to get out on Kismet (conditions permitting) if you are ever in Edinburgh. You will get an acknowledgement in my book as a thank you for your incredible support, and a Kismet-centred welcome package.

Looking Ahead

I write every week, and post daily notes. All fully human made with flaws and errors aplenty, completely AI free. You can look forward to posts every Saturday about:

• Sailing, travelling and nature writing, reconnecting with nature and appreciating the slow pace of water, our place on earth, and all the beautiful creatures we share it with.

• My scientific career and how I burnt out.

• How I navigate mental health, burnout and motivation.

• Stories, books and art that inspire and make us appreciate life on a deeper level.

• Poems

And I’m sure there will be more things. For every week I write a post, I get five new ideas. Eventually I may even get around to posting about the novels I’ve been working on for years.

So thank you again for reading, for your support and for participating in this community. This feels like the beginning of something.

Fair winds,

Alexander and Kismet

The skipper aboard Kismet approaching Cape Wrath