Over the last seven months, I’ve applied to more than 400 job listings, conveying my strengths and weaknesses in exactly 20 interviews. This humbling, and astoundingly common, search started during a gap in my ten-city book tour, which I dubbed “the farewell tour.” Meaning, I memorialized a body of work dating back to 2012—packaged for eternal rest on coffee tables—and set out on an elaborate procession to commemorate its legacy with the community that shaped it. A Great Gay Book debuted on May 20, 2024 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, surrounded by loved ones in the gardens at Philbrook Museum of Art. And as I traveled from coast-to-coast-to-coast, sunsetting this chapter once and for all, I readied myself to begin again.
I’m actually quite comfortable at the starting line. I love getting briefed on a project, the coy negotiations of a new relationship, brainstorming phases, mornings. Potential is an intoxicating thing. As a cautious optimist, I tend to see where things could go. Which isn’t to say I never see things through—I revel in “calling it a day”—but not all promising beginnings turn out as expected, even after giving it your all. Some things are only good for a season. Many just aren’t a match. Occasionally, a false start will return to reveal what you couldn’t see in the midst of it.
I first outlined the theme of this Substack six years ago with an ex-boyfriend. We were uncoupling, or trying to, and at our best, wanted to see our ending as an opening. How brave. We hadn’t been dating long enough to warrant couples therapy, and didn’t make enough dough to justify paying for it. So instead, we listened to episodes of Esther Perel’s Where Should We Begin when we cooked, and volleyed vignettes for our underdone series, Endings, when we were apart.
True to form, I led a brainstorm in his living room and captured our brilliance in a shared Google Doc (keeping us digitally enmeshed forever!). I may be mistaken, but we definitely fucked after this in-person session. And I’m pretty sure it was electric.
Eventually, we did break up. For good. And in 2019, I left Brooklyn after closing the magazine that brought me there six years earlier. I had a lot to grieve, clearly. After a few uninspired months searching for work (v1), I reached out and asked for his blessing to reinvigorate the project on my own. First, I designed a logo and secured the domain and Instagram handle where I planned to share vintage film credits, extinct species, discontinued products, and tributes to dead celebrities; aesthetically pleasing posts intended to draw an audience around the topic while the pod took shape. I wrote a 2,500 word script and hired an all-star sound designer and composer to produce a 30 minute pilot, with original theme music and everything.
It began with the recording of a conversation with one of my editors about the decision to cease publication. I was wrestling conflicting emotions and fighting a cold in this brief clip of the aptly titled episode, “Losing My Voice”:
As a storyteller, this self-indulgent process was how I made sense of letting go. I got the final edit in February of 2020, but imminent events of the global pandemic halted all probing into other’s experiences with endings. Sadly, not for a lack of material. I’ve thought a lot about whether abandoning this series fulfilled the episode’s prophecy, convincing myself I had nothing more to say, or if the exercise in honesty had made way for me to finally move on. Sophia Efthimiatou, Head of Writer Relations at Substack, echoed this contemplation in this poignant post:
I revisited those recordings for the pilot while I was putting together A Great Gay Book. I wanted to access that headspace and clean out the remaining decay. If releasing that book was a reconciliation with my past, is finding a job a practice in building a future? I’m done waiting. So I opt to start now, with communities that nourish me.
Endings is about all of this; starting again in an uncertain world. I can’t predict how it will evolve, but I think Substack is a perfect home for it. Like grief, it will be erratic and imperfect, but I’m excited to share those parts of myself here and connect with others feeling their way through life, too. It seems to already be working, with reassuring notes like these cleansing my feed:
You’re a master story -teller, -gatherer, -generator, Ryan. I’m genuinely looking forward to your captures, your shares. I haven’t purchased your book, yet, but plan to. Keep on keeping on.