God Stuff:

… this has become, much to my confusion, a semi-Christian substack now. I am writing about my journey from trendy spirituality to traditional Christianity. Why the switch? I start explaining in my post New Age Demons.

I’m running “God talk” zoom calls and a book club every month behind the paywall.

Why “Problematic?”

I wrote the books The F*ck It Diet and Tired as F*ck — I used to have a very liberal readership and audience.

And as you might imagine…. “problematic is what people started calling me, as soon as I stopped identifying with the current acceptable liberal narrative, and and started letting myself say what I really thought about what’s going on in our culture. Covid was the kickstart for me. Then I deconstructed a lot of my political worldview. Now, apparently, according to former fans who hate me, I’m “alt-right.”

What happened to the old-school liberals? What happened to the liberals who distrusted Big Pharma and Big Government? To me, the definitions of liberal vs conservative drastically changed, pretty recently. But to my ‘liberal’ ex-fans, using my free speech to disagree with their own orthodoxy makes me some sort of extremist terrorist fascist. Which is ironic.

Political melodrama aside, I’m not a journalist or political commentator. At all.

I’m a storyteller. And this is my newsletter.

Will I change the name of my substack, now that I’ve shifted my focus? Maybe. But for now, it’s still “Problematic”…. It feels like it still works… because it still feels pretty problematic to believe in Jesus and demons and stuff. Lolzy.


How I Became Problematic - the longer version…

Back in March 2020, I was a woke-ish author, with a large audience in the anti-diet and body positive online world. My branding was rebellious and counter-culture, with f*ck in the title of my books. I wanted to empower people to listen to their bodies and eat. I wanted people to examine the exhausting, hustle-filled lives they lived in order to remain “impressive” on the outside, and opt-out. It’s not that I don’t agree with those things anymore, I do. But as I reflect back on my personal brand of “rebellion,” I was still very much playing by the cultural rules.

My worldview was very acceptably liberal. I was rewarded for it. My low level of questioning of Big Pharma and the CDC and FDA when it came to food and diet? Acceptable. We’ll allow it. When I was writing about body autonomy in regards to weight and dieting? Brave. Life-changing. But I was not a rebel. These had become very socially acceptable stances to take. It was a way to pretend to be sticking it to the man, but now that I look back… it is clear that “my people,” the liberals, had actually recently become the man. By the time I was getting book deals, “woke” (for lack of a better term) liberalism, social justice warrior culture, and identity politics had become the dominant force in our culture. 

I was not a rebel at all.

It wasn’t until 2020, when I started disagreeing with the mainstream approach to COVID, listening to the censored doctors and epidemiologists who warned against lockdowns and mandates, and questioning the authoritarian flair and compelled speech of the anti-racism rules… that’s when I started participating in “wrong think.” That’s when I realized that the things I wanted to say? I couldn’t say them. The things I wanted to ask? I couldn’t ask them. I would be ripped apart. Up until that point I had been a writer who wrote about what I thought, and all of a sudden, my thoughts were not allowed. 

The difference between my previous “rebellious ideas” and my new ones? It was stark. Before then, I’d risked very little by sharing my thoughts and beliefs. I’d risked very little to disagree with diet culture. But this was different. This was where you were not allowed to go. This was what you were not allowed to think. This was too far.

I was writing my second book about my experiences with self-help, extreme diets, and exhaustion… but the biggest theme of the book was how common it is for humans to get stuck in cult mentality and group think. And as I wrote during summer 2020, and as I looked at our culture, and how much you were not allowed to say, I realized… oh no. It’s all acting like a cult. You are not allowed to ask questions. You are not allowed to disagree. And if you do, you are obliterated, shamed, shunned… 

So, I kept my mouth shut for over a year. I hoped it would all die down and I’d be able to write about it one day when we all had more distance from it. But it didn’t get better. It got worse. In 2021, it all became more polarizing than ever. And when I finally refused to grovel and apologize for a “triggering” April Fool’s post about turning my anti-diet account into a fitness account, when I started posting about the authoritarian cult vibes of cancel culture, and when I posted that I was against medical mandates… ohhhh that’s when the consequences started. That’s when I was dangerous.

Lots of people think I’m taking a deep turn from what I believed before, but… it’s actually pretty consistent with the body autonomy, and don’t believe every health rule the government tells you that I’ve always written about and believed in. But noooooo now I’ve gone rogue apparently.

If you’re interested in learning more about The F*ck It Diet, and why you’re not a food addict, no matter how crazy you are around food… find out everything here.

Now I Write About God

As if it wasn’t bad enough during the year or two when I was deconstructing my political beliefs, now it’s gotten even more weird and more polarizing. As of Fall 2022 I’ve gone on an unexpected, and previously very unwanted reconversion to Christianity. I’ve left my witchy new age life behind, and now, I’m becoming a Jesus person, the last thing I ever wanted to be.

Why? Well… I believe in demons.

(Hahahah. Yes I know! It sounds insane! But I’m being serious.)

You can read all about why here: New Age Demons.

I’m also running a very casual “Bible Study” behind the paywall, and intend to keep doing other books/studies behind the paywall after it’s over.

Why subscribe?

If you subscribe by email, each new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your email inbox — both free and/or paid posts, depending on what you signed up for.

Different subscription meanings:

Free — you’ll get my posts sent straight to your email. Most often, my posts will be free, even if they are marked as paid, only so I can paywall my audio voiceover.

Paid — you’ll get access to all my posts, and all the audio voiceovers I record for the posts. You’ll also be able to comment on all posts, and start your own chat threads. And take part in the discussion groups I hold behind the paywall.

To sum it up, this is what you get for being a paid subscriber:

  1. My paywalled book clubs/Bible Study

  2. The ability to comment on all posts.

  3. My voiceovers of posts, recorded just for you. You can listen on substack or access them a private podcast feed where you can listen in your favorite podcast app. I also usually go off script and add details into the audio version on the fly.

  4. The ability to respond to my emails, and have me actually get your email.

  5. Some posts that are exclusively paid, and not ready to be public to the world.

Problematic is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Find some of my favorite free posts:

New Age Demons

Rejection Therapy Regrets

The Catfish of Prosperity

Some of my top paid posts:

White Violence, Apparently

Dylan Mylvaney and the Perfect Face

The Catfish of Not-Prosperity

Paid, Behind-The Scenes Posts:

The F*ck It Diet Author Commentary: Part 1: Audiobook, Part 2: Editor From Hell

And way more…

Subscribe to Problematic

I write mostly about God now. I used to write about intuitive eating, then I became a rebellious libertarian during covid, which made most of my former readers hate me. Then I converted (back) to Christianity. Yes it's all been very strange.

People

Ex-lib. Ex-new age. Problematic writer and newer Jesus freak. Author of The F*ck It Diet and Tired as F*ck.