And We’re Back!

I finally got a job

I haven’t posted a long-form post since June. The reason why was pretty straight forward: I was going crazy.

People joked about the world cup being a utopia for unemployed people, and being one of those unemployed people I can confirm it was! But that was the only “good” thing about the last few months. The last 6 weeks especially have been extremely rough.

I was worn down from being unemployed a few months longer than anticipated, and it long enough where the precipice of financial ruin was much closer than I was comfortable. I was in no condition to write long posts, read books, or research anything but a job lead.

But the good news is that it’s over now! I start a new job in about a week, and I’m excited about it. My brain is returning to factory settings. I don’t know how much energy my new job will take up relative to my previous job, but I won’t have the same ambient stress that I had the last few months, and it’ll also be easier to segment my day and allocate my energy.

If you’ve ever been unemployed for an extended period of time, you know exactly what I’ve gone through. When you’re unemployed, you’re always “on” in the sense that you’re looking for jobs online at random hours of the day/night, you have email notifications on, and you’re constantly thinking about ways to get a job, network, make more money, and so you. You may not be working per se, but you are thinking about work at more times than you otherwise would if you had a job with decent work-life balance.

At my previous job, I did a chunk of my writing after work because I could turn off my work brain and think more about philosophy. I couldn’t do that while job hunting. But now that I have a job, I hope to return to writing very soon.

What’s Next?

Mitigated Skepticism

As I said in a previous post, this substack will focus a little bit more on Hume studies than it has previously. The reason why is because I see a niche for Hume education and popularization. The best Humean philosophers are busy with their academic lives or not on substack. Though I’m a mere philosophy BA who would love to one day have an MA, I put enough attention and care into researching Hume where I have a little bit of an advantage over pretty much anyone who hasn’t studied Hume at a graduate level. In short, I want to be a Hume/philosophy educator, if only as a hobbyist.

In absolute terms, I consider my Hume knowledge only intermediate, even if I’m advanced relative to other people. I’m sufficiently advanced that I have been approached to do a podcast (a philosophy/theology podcast that you’ve probably heard of) about Hume, specifically about his argument on miracles and my writings on the argument. Though this was flattering, I had to turn them down for various reasons.

For one, I’m not quite confident enough in my Hume knowledge to go in a debate/confrontational conversation. A lot of the contention about Hume is not about the things he said (which I can defend right now), but the implications of the things he said (which I can also defend, just not as well), where I need to do more research. I’m confident I can get to that point relatively soon, but I have to get my brain back in shape (I haven’t thought about Hume in almost two months!) and do more research about these subjects.

Now that I have a job and getting back on my proverbial Hume horse, I’ll be more open to such opportunities in the near future, but it would be unwise to do so until at least the end of September. Still, I’m proud of this invitation, as it was great positive feedback, indicating that I’m on the right track with what I’m doing here.

Sports And Philosophy

I also hope to fire up my second blog with philosophy of sports content. I think that’s another “market” in online philosophy that’s undersupplied, and I think I’m well positioned to provide that supply. The reason why is because most sports fans don’t care about philosophy, and most philosophy enjoyers care little about sports (nerds!). I consider this tragic because sports metaphors are great vehicles to communicate philosophy, and sports are often the most readily available expression of real world philosophy.

Weirdly enough, I think writing about philosophy in sports will be much easier than Hume because there’s just so much low hanging fruit. If you’d like to join me in writing about Sports and Philosophy, let me know and you can be a contributor. I think there’s more potential for the sports substack to blow up relative to the Humean one.

All to say, it’s my aspiration to build a little side hustle and likely a podcast out of one or both of these ventures. I don’t anticipate substack or philosophy ever being a full time job for me, but if I can get to the level where I make a few hundred (or even one thousand!) dollars a month writing a couple posts or a podcast, that would be great.

Upcoming Posts

Mitigated Skepticism

Before I took my little hiatus, I was writing a long post continuing on the theme of awesome evidence. I’m not sure if I want to continue that, but I think there are interesting things to say about the best strategy of assuming uniformity of nature when modeling reality. I wrote a lot on this in a half-finished draft, and I’ll have to investigate what’s worth bringing up again. I’ll hopefully have something on this in the coming weeks.

I’m also reading Massimo Pigliucci’s book on “happy skepticism” and I’m loving it so far, and I see an opportunity to use it to contrast Humean, Academic, and Pyrrhonian skepticism. I already had plans to eventually write a post contrasting Hume from Pyrrho, but Pigliucci’s book is strongly pro-Academic, so I think that would enrich the post. I may write that post next week (no promises!).

Sports And Philosophy

With college football season starting in about two weeks, I hope to write something college football related on my second blog, but not sure what yet. I literally have dozens of sports philosophy post ideas on a google doc somewhere, but I have to sit down and actually write it.

Thanks Everybody

In all, I’m very glad this trying chapter of my life is over and I can start looking forward to getting my finances and everything else back on track. I hope you’ll join me as I get back into writing/reading/talking about philosophy.

Right now, I have roughly 370 subscribers (give or take a few), and that’s more people who have ever read my content. I’m very grateful for that!

I’m aiming to have 500 followers/subscribers on Mitigated Skepticism by the end of the year, and hope to get 50 for Sports and Philosophy.

Thank you to everyone who follows and subscribes!

Joe