My Final Essay
I'm closing this door, quietly.
I believe that everything has a time frame; nothing lasts forever. Some things outlive us, creating the illusion that they are forever, while other things hardly last at all, seeming to pass just as soon as they started.
When I started I hadn’t imagined that InThirdPerson’s journey would have been so short, yet I also hadn’t imagined that I was going to write 120 essays in two years. I’ve learnt a lot since then, and I certainly don’t regret any of it, however I do feel that I now need to move on.
I’m no stranger to moving on, having abandoned just as many dreams as I’ve started.
We often live under the illusion of the moment, thinking that what is today will go on forever, when really one of the only certainties we have about life is that nothing lasts forever. We chase forever marriages and forever dreams, but I propose that all which is good and all which is bad is only temporary.
InThirdPerson was never forever, it was only for as long as it needed to be. I had planned for that to be longer, however that’s not the case and I’m ok with that.
I believe in the power of the moment. The idea that, what is today is what you need to get to tomorrow. InThirdPerson has been a part of your journey, as it has been mine, and even if it will no longer play that role, it has already served its time.
To honour the work I’ve done, I’ll be leaving the full collection online. So for any of you who feel that you don’t want to go without InThirdPerson, I encourage you to work back through my material at your own pace; I have over 100 essays ready to be read at any moment :)
My work will remain available here on Substack, but also on Medium too. The links to both my homepages can be found below, please save these links or refer back to this email to find my writing in future.
I’ve stuttered a little in writing this final essay. Notably it’s been one of the hardest to write, despite the rather simple message it carries. I guess it’s just hard to make your legs walk once you’ve already lost the motivation to. Along with that are the feelings of grief, betrayal, and confusion that naturally come with letting go of something that you were once close to.
I find myself with ideas and themes to write on, but also with an ever-increasing lack of desire to express them here. I wish I could download my thoughts into your mind without the hours of labour it takes to capture and transfer them digitally.
I’ll never stop thinking and expressing my views with others, I guess really I’m just stopping sharing them here.
I miss being able to share what I’m thinking and how I’m feeling and what’s going on in my life, maybe I’ll get a girlfriend to share with instead. Either way, it’s been great to be able to share my story and have such positive responses from so many of you.
I can’t capture just how amazing is has been to hear from people in my actual life, but also from those who only know me digitally, just how much they have enjoyed my work; which makes it all the more difficult to go. Really the only thing that has kept me going over the past few weeks has been the thought that others enjoy what I’m making. I was doing it for you guys, but I can’t keep that up forever.
Paid Subscriptions
If you were a paying subscriber you may have received an email letting you know that your paid subscription was cancelled, this is because I went ahead and cancelled them as soon as I made the decision to stop posting new material.
To those of you who were paying subscribers, I’m eternally grateful for your support and frankly upset that I have to turn away the support I spent 2 years search for; but that’s life.
It’s not lost on me that I’m turning away people willing to pay me to create, the very dream that many creatives spend their lives chasing. But I feel a bigger opportunity calling, and I’ve got to do what feels right for me.
I accept the privilege of being able to turn down success in favour of another form of success, and thank you all for hopefully understanding that decision.
I really don’t know what else to say, in fact I haven’t known what to say in this essay at all. I guess all I could do was tell you how I feel, which I suppose is all I’ve really ever done here.
Thank you for reading InThirdPerson, thank you for your support, and I hope this project has been able to contribute to your life in a meaningful way 🫶