Seventeens, Sad Dads, and Surveys

Andrew asks you questions.

In high school and college, I worked for Northwest Market Research Group in Bellevue, Washington.

This might not be a thing anymore, but I was one of those guys who calls you up during dinner and tries to ask you a bunch of questions.

In some ways, I am still that guy. I like to let my curiosity drive a conversation, to turn the spotlight away from myself and toward the quirky thing you’re about to say.

But here, in Substackland, I am the verbose one. So perhaps it is time to flip things around and do a survey. Would you help me out?

If yes, and you like short preambles, here’s the link—and thank you!—but if you want more context and some self-reflection on my humanoid status, read on!

I’ve been thinking of changing the name of this Substack, and that’s the main impetus for the survey. My current title, the 17 point scale, is, I think, too obscure to attract new readers. It also doesn’t really connect to what I’ve been writing here for the last year.

Here’s how I currently put it in my “About” page:

The title “the 17 point scale” is a throwback to my old blog, which erroneously claimed to be the world wide web’s home for recipes and random thoughts on life, grammar, and “that other thing you’re really interested in.”

The gimmick was that I reviewed books and films on a seventeen-point scale. I thought that by jostling myself out of more standard four-, five-, or seven-point scales, I might force us to think differently or more intently about a work. And it didn’t hurt that seventeen is likely the second-most beautiful digit.

These days, life seems to do enough jostling of its own, and the construct seems a bit weird. But in many ways, I’m still that same twenty-four-year-old kid, that same Enneagram 5 looking for ways to objectively—and beautifully—understand the world, and so I liked the idea of resurrecting that title here.

I still like that title, and I might keep it. But I’d love something that conveys more of what I’m doing here and who I am.

Here are some randomly sorted alternatives I’ve been considering, as well as some additional context:

1. Absence, Presence, and the In-Between — Absence and presence have been like key words for me here. I think they carry both ambiguity and weight, and they ignite something in my brain when I see them. They also might hem me in a bit thematically, and I bet they feel too self-serious. I’m also not stuck on that particular framing. For example, I could work with Absence and Presence and All the Rest.

2. The Sad Dad Substack — This nicely fits a lot of my content so far, as I have primarily tackled hard (or sad) topics and I’ve taken fatherhood as one of my main themes. I particularly like how that silly rhyme does some reverse engineering on the meaning, making a dark thing turn slightly funny. But it hems me in even more than Absence and Presence. It’s also a phrase that already exists to describe a genre of music (like my favorite band, the National), though there isn’t a Substack with that name. So it might have coattails, but it won’t be original.

3. Robot Feelings — I can’t believe this title isn’t taken. It’s a title that is less thematic than the other two and more about me, the writer. Here’s what I mean: the other day my friend S. joked that I’m a robot—it’s a long-running joke in which he’s means I’m analytical and famously not prone to emotion. But that same week, my friend P. reflected on a time I came to church crying, and then J. read one of my essays and told my wife I was quite the emotional dude. To me, those reactions seem paradoxical and yet right on. I do have feelings! And I think there’s something about my robot nature that helps me feel safe riding (and writing) the knife’s edge of an emotional moment. All that to say, I go back and forth on the value of opting for a thematic descriptor (which may fall away in a year) and a narrator descriptor (which may be true to my unique voice but doesn’t embrace a niche). I also worry that someone will think I’m doing some kind of experiment getting AI to write emotionally, which I am not doing.

So there’s the context. I’d love to hear what you think!

FAMILY IS ALL ABOUT LOVE. This is from the Taipei airport, the one airport that I would try to count as visiting the country, as it is the most distinctive airport I’ve ever visited. These robots clearly have feelings.

Thank you for reading! Help me find more readers and pay for daycare by upgrading to a paid subscription and/or giving me a one-time tip.