When I started this podcast, I had a clear idea of what I wanted it to be. Twelve episodes. I would tell the story of the false accusation brought against me, from arrest to acquittal. Four painfully long years.
I wrote it, voiced it, and produced it alone. I released it to a small group of people. Then I rewrote it, re-recorded it, updated every episode, and released it again earlier this year.
When I listen to some of the episodes I recorded more than two years ago, I’m struck by how calm I sounded. The writing was uneven. But what I hear underneath all of it is vulnerability. I really did put it all out there. I left myself open to attack. To ridicule. To the possibility that someone would invent a new accusation just to shut the project down.
The cost of doing this podcast, in practical terms, was close to twenty-five thousand dollars. The show is a loss. My audience is small, growing here and there, but still little more than a small theater, where ticket holders often don’t show up for a particular performance. That’s the metrics. But the engagement rate is impressive. Most people who start an episode finish it.
What I didn’t think about in this process is what comes after the last episode. After the acquittal. What’s next?
So I kept writing and recording. But I couldn’t find a strong pulse. I tried writing about other men who may have been wrongfully accused. I wrote about media bias. I wrote about pieces of my recovery, the long tail of it.
A few months ago, I started to feel like I was circling the same thing. It started to feel forced.
The episodes that feel good to write and record these days are the ones where I travel beyond the moat. My story about burying animal remains. Driving to New York a year ago. The horses of Linton. Those feel much closer to who I am now. Not the ugly disfigurement of my life by underhanded clowns. Something else. I’ll still be writing and commenting on media and culture. But I don’t want to be known as the guy defending people accused of ugly crimes, innocent or not. I don’t want to spend precious life toiling over statistics and academic jargon. I don’t want to continually dip my pen in the bitter ink of discord, anger, dishonesty, and the dangers of mob justice.
It’s not easy work for someone with cognitive impatience, because my mind is constantly churning. After my arrest, and all of the things I spent 50 years building were destroyed, writing became a way to process the overwhelm, to dig out, and to recenter my mind on the present. That was much easier when the enemy of my existence was so obvious, now, the challenges come from inside me, trying to find some balance and direction in this long arc of healing.
As I move forward, more of my content will be paywalled. Purely because I have to try to recover something for my time. Any reader is a good reader. Paid readers are great readers. My goal is one thousand paid subscribers in the next year.
There are a couple of important things I’m working on. One is a book. I hope it will be out this fall, or sometime next year. I want to work with a publisher, so it may take a bit longer. There are also some bigger projects on the horizon that I can’t wait to tell you about, when I can.
Thank you for your support. I hope to keep feeding these pages, and keep attracting new readers and subscribers with your help. And to the many people who listen, and who share their thoughts with me directly. Thank you.
