Goodbye, Substack

it was kind of fun but i have MS now

I first used Substack in 2020. Back then, my life centered around learning Los Angeles, surviving in a pandemic, and working at Twitter.

One year into my first foray in corporate America, I was beginning to feel like people might forget about me as a writer. That need to stay top of mind, while not as powerful as my days at Grantland or New York Magazine, was still there. I couldn’t shake it.

The main issue was that I didn’t feel comfortable asking people for money, especially as the plague raged. So I decided to do a charity Substack, posting every day, for 158 days — a similar style to my first blog in 2011.

I enjoyed it and the site served its purpose — reminding people that I still had it, convincing myself that folks will show up if I create an inspired product, and giving me the practice to begin freelancing again.

A creative outlet was always something I needed, especially one connecting me to people.

It ran from April to September of 2020. And then I went back to work at Twitter.

By 2022, I was on a new team at Twitter, building tools for writers. And internally, we were positioning Substack as a competitor. So the people making decisions at our rival became of some importance to me.

In April of that year, as Elongate was beginning to rage, Substack’s VP of Communications sent a Tweet.

Lulu Cheng Meservey@lulumeservey

Substack is hiring! If you’re a Twitter employee who’s considering resigning because you’re worried about Elon Musk pushing for less regulated speech… please do not come work here.

4:14 PM · Apr 5, 2022

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2.44K Replies · 10K Reposts · 101K Likes

My first thought was, “damn, no one in tech can write.” My second was “ew.” My third was probably, “she’s definitely going to write for Bari Weiss’ site in a few months.”

Soon after, Elon fired 4,000 people without giving them severance and my life moved on. I worked on a TV show, got a book deal, and started working on that book.

And then I kept working on that book.

And then I stopped working on that book.

And then I started back working on that book.

By the end of 2024, I realized I needed significantly more time to get it done. Which meant I wouldn’t get my next advance check for a long while. Which meant I needed another income stream.

In my 12 months of working on this blog, my second Substack, I made $1800. Even though money was one of my two motivators for starting a Substack (the other being Fiona and Austin, the two people working at the company who I liked and respected), I realized by my second quarterly dump in July that I would never make a living off this site.

It was only partially about the money, though. The leading reason was a new chapter — in April I was hospitalized for a week and by May I’d been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS).

It’s one of the forever diseases, an autoimmune condition with no cure that attacks my brain, spinal cord, and central nervous system.

When I tell someone that I have it, their first response is always “I’m so sorry.” At first this made me feel like a walking downer, but I’ve learned to accept it as the most honest reaction. Because it does suck.

Every week, I learn more about the parts of my life the disease has sunk its teeth into. Six months into my diagnosis, it feels like every part of my life. Long walks have become taxing, my back is stiff as a board, my muscles have atrophied and I’ve lost too much weight, staying focused on work can feel impossible, and my social battery has plummeted to shy guy levels.

It’s terrifying, at 38, to suddenly not feel like yourself and also, frequently, like a 60 year old man.

My severely decreased energy is the primary side-effect, a painful reality for a former energizer bunny.

In the past month, I finally pushed through the grieving phase, which has led to a plan to fight back. Because I’m not done. I have things I want to do, people I want to help and entertain and inspire. But all of my motives have changed. Things that used to live rent-free in my mind now have no place in my life.

And in a shocking twist, I think MS is going to turn me into the best version of myself.

I have a job now, Editorial Director at Yahoo Weather, but my life can’t revolve around work. My focus has to be drinking my water when I wake up, stretching (and holding the stretches for 30 whole seconds), having a high protein breakfast, going to the gym for weight training and yoga for flexibility, going to my multiple recovery meetings (for addiction and for MS), and no longer smoking weed.

These are things I always wanted to do on my own, but could never put it all together. But now it’s my reality, and I’m starting to buy in, largely because my first child, a baby boy, is showing up in April.

It’s a great time to reach my potential.

Because of all of this, there’s no more time for Substack. I’ll still look at the feed, because I need to know what MHKC and J have to say about the world, and I love the communities that Shea and Hunter have built.

But I literally can’t do it anymore.

Blogs can be written, but my days as a blogger have ended. It’s okay though, 15 years of blogs and bylines and talking to the public is something that I’ll always be proud of, one of the great treats of my life.

I will keep writing. While the disease has made writing more difficult, I’ve never felt more alive as an essayist. My book, for example, has completely changed given my 2025 and now it’s transformed from a modest hagiography to a text about right now and where we’re headed, from my 2026 perspective. For years, I found it more comfortable to write about my past from the point of view of my former self, but now I’m more interested in thinking about how my past (and ours) informs our next steps. That’s the book I should be writing right now, so I’m going to go do it.

For years, I’ve been thinking about this next chapter of my career, repeatedly trying to man-make it in my image. But like many other things in my life, it took circumstances out of my control to force me to change.

But I do know how to change. And I’m eager to see where I land. I don’t need to stay top of mind anymore, I need to disappear. But what I can promise, in some capacity, I’ll take you with me in the moments when I return.

-Rembert Browne // January 4, 2026