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Podcast #2: My Self-publishing journey
I discuss doubt in my life, especially around AA/12-step recovery, my writing career, and the concept of family.
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Here is the written transcript of my podcast, if interested:
Welcome to Sincere American Podcast, which is based off my substak called Sincere American Writing. On the pod, I’ll discuss four main topics. Writing from the perspective of a published author and successful book editor. Recovery from the perspective of a man sober since 2010 and approaching sobriety. Recovery in AA from a nuanced point of view.
Being an expat from the perspective of an American who lives in Madrid and travels often. and masculinity from the perspective of a man who rejects the binary extremes pushed by the media and sees complexity within identity. I am not an expert, and my goal is not to tell you how things work. Instead,
I want to stir my own cognitive pot, think emotionally as well as intellectually, ask the big questions, pose theories, discuss my personal experiences, and hopefully make you feel less alone. This is just me solo telling my truth. My Substack covers plenty of this content, as well as fiction, memoir, literature, book reviews, cultural criticism, politics, and much more.
For my writing on Substack, check out michaelmohr.substack.com. That’s M-I-C-H-A-E-L-M-O-H-R.substack.com. See links in the show notes for my books and my Substack. Email thoughts and questions to michw.mohr at gmail.com. michw.mohr at gmail.com. Enjoy the show.
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Hey everybody, it’s Michael Mohr again. So I wanted to talk today about doubt, just general doubt in life, the doubt that I’ve been feeling lately. I go through phases, I’m sure most of us do, where, you know, I feel really good about myself and good about my life and kind of on top of the world as a writer, as a man, as a husband, as a son.
Well, I don’t know. I don’t know if I ever feel on top of the world as a husband or a son. I do the best I can, but definitely as a writer and as a man in general, as someone who’s pursuing his dreams to the best of his ability in life.
And then, you know, and as a sober man, a sober member of AA, etc., And then there are other times in my life and I’m in one of those moments right now where there’s just a lot of doubt. I just feel a lot of doubt, broadly speaking, in my life.
And I just wanted to talk about that and get vulnerable and get real with you. So like, for example, AA, you know, I’m, as you all know, you know, who have been listening to me for a while. I live in Madrid. My wife and I live in Madrid. We’ve been here about six months now.
You know, I just celebrated 15 years sober on September 24th. I’ve gone through many different phases with AA over the years, but one thing that’s been pretty consistent since maybe around year four, the first year I got sober, I 98% rejected AA and thought it was a Christian cult and I questioned everything about it.
And then around year one, I got really involved for about three years and I was... a secretary of a meeting, a couple of meetings, and I sponsored people and I was very involved and I read the book, the AA big book and all of that. But since around year four,
I’ve been not as connected to AA and I’ve kind of always done it since then my own way. so to speak. And I firmly believe there’s no one quote unquote right way to do AA. I think there’s a lot of ways to slice the tomatoes, so to speak.
It doesn’t have to be one proper, quote unquote, proper, correct way. Although some old timers and big book thumpers, as they’re known, will say otherwise. But my deeper point is this. The AA here in Madrid, it’s great. They’re good meetings. There’s, I think, three or four different meetings that I’m aware of.
Two main ones that kind of happen most days of the week, one in the morning or one in the afternoon and one at night. And it’s a tight-knit community. It’s not a big AA community here in Madrid. And everyone I’ve met so far has been great.
They’ve been really friendly and really nice and welcoming for the most part and all that. But the thing is, is I... I still feel this outsider sense, like this sense of being an outsider, this sense of not fully being involved in AA in general, and then specifically here in AA Madrid.
And it’s true, and it’s, I do it to myself, and I know I do it to myself. Like I said, since around year four, so for the last, you know, 11 years, I kind of have, I dip a big toe, maybe a couple toes into the program, but... I never get fully involved. I don’t do commitments.
I don’t sponsor people. And I haven’t, I don’t have a sponsor and I haven’t had those things in a long time. And there are complicated reasons for that. Some of the reasons, one of the reasons is that over time, I’ve developed some critiques of AA from my own personal perspective and point of view.
I have some criticisms of it and I’m not going to go into those today. I don’t think it’s relevant to what I’m talking about now. But the point is I don’t fully buy into AA specifically quote-unquote ideology or culture. And yet at the same time,
I recognize that it’s played a huge role in my life and probably saved my life in many ways. Even though, you know, it took me over a year until I actually got a sponsor and started doing the steps and everything. But there’s no doubt that AA has been an incredibly important part of my life.
And I still go to meetings to this day, even if not frequently. And I’m connected to some good friends who are sober and do AA. But I feel like an outsider and that makes me feel sad and I guess ashamed. I feel like I’m quote unquote, I should be more connected, more involved. I should be participating more.
I should be volunteering at the meetings to help out. I should be sponsoring people. But at the same time, if I’m completely honest with myself, I don’t want to do that stuff. It’s just, I just simply do not want to do it.
And I don’t fully believe in all of it in the same way that I once did. And frankly, this, what I’m talking about, kind of permeates everything in my life, if I’m totally honest. The truth is I don’t fully let people in. I don’t fully let people into my life.
My wife is probably the only person I really, truly have let fully into my life in all the ways possible. And maybe even then, I don’t know if that’s fully, absolutely, completely true. I think, you know, it’d be easy to blame this on my mom and my dad, you know, genetics,
because they were very much their own people who, you know, my mom has a good, pretty big sized close friend group for sure. My dad, not so much. My dad was more focused on my mom and on his work. More than anything else, he didn’t really have, properly speaking, what we would call genuine friends.
He had work colleagues. He had some friends in common with my mom that were kind of more my mom’s friends. He was friends with them, but he didn’t really have his own personal people in that way. And that’s fine. I’m not judging that. And my mom has always had friends, but also been very wary of people.
And I have both of them in me. I have both of those things in me. And I’m more detached from people in general, I think, now than I ever have been. Brittany and I spend a lot of time together, almost all of our time together. And if I’m not with her, I’m generally alone.
And that was true in Portland. That was true in Lompoc. That was true in Santa Barbara. for the most part, not completely. And it’s still true now. And I think that’s just, it’s part of who I am. It’s my contrarian nature. I like, I’m just a difficult person.
It’s like, I get exhausted by myself sometimes, you know, like I want people to be close to me. I want to be loved and I want to offer love, but I also get scared when people get too close. I get scared when people ask too much of me or what I perceive to be too much of me.
It’s quite selfish in a way, for sure. I am an only child and there’s something to that. But it’s also just, I guess, because I’m sensitive and kind of a really deep and intense person, I... I just it’s hard for me to get to trust people, I guess, completely.
It’s hard for me to fully get close to people because I feel like they’re flawed and they’re full of contradictions and they don’t always tell the truth. And they say one thing and then do another or they talk about you behind your back. And guess what?
I have enough self-awareness to know that I do all those things, too. That’s the most frustrating part about all of it is I know that I do all the same stuff too. I’m just as much of a contradictory human being that rewrites my own history in
some ways and tells my own truth in some ways and sees history from a slant perspective in some ways. Like we all do this to varying degrees. I think I do it more than the average. I think a lot of artists and alcoholics do in general. But yeah, it’s challenging because like I said,
I want to be close to people, but it’s hard for me to be close to people. And it feels safest and most comfortable to be alone, to be with my wife, who I love and trust and who loves and trusts me. Her family’s visiting right now and her mom and her aunt. They’re both great. They’re both fantastic.
I really I love them and appreciate them. And I see how important they are to Brittany. And it’s great that they came out here to visit us. And I actually had a really good time with them and I’ve enjoyed being with them. At the same time, I feel really tired and exhausted from the experience,
just not because of them, but just because when I’m around people, it’s tiring. My mom is coming tomorrow and she’s going to be here for a week and a half. And I’m really looking forward to it. And I’m also aware that it’s going to be draining for me because she’s my mom.
I love her and we’re really close. And she also knows how to press all the buttons and without intending to. And it’s just the way that it goes. And going back to the doubt thing, it’s like, With my writing. So like I was going to... Yeah, so basically the past four months, about four,
a little over four months now since May, my Substack subscriber numbers have just totally just flattened. I basically... Where I was at with subscribers back in May is I’m like actually a little bit below that now. I’ve gone up and down, up and down, up and down. And I peaked, I think like about a month ago.
And then I’ve lost about 32 free subscribers and a couple paid subscribers. Since that point, about a month ago. And it’s just, it’s very disheartening. It’s like, I don’t know. I’ve been taking like a five, six day break. Right now is September 30th, the last day of September.
So you’re going to be getting this in the first few days or so of October. So things will have changed in a few different ways by then. But I don’t know why. I have my theories. I have theories. And if anyone wants to shoot me an email or respond to, you know,
I’ll leave comments open on the podcast post. But if anyone has any thoughts or feelings on this, feel free to let me know. But I sort of feel like it’s my theory is that it’s a mix of too many posts too often, just posting too often because everyone’s email inboxes are already jammed.
Too much political writing, too much maybe even angry political writing. Yeah. People are already being everyone’s being inundated with that right now. And everything that’s going on in the United States with Trump and political violence and everything else is just there’s so much happening all the time and more mass shootings and just problems.
And people are probably they’ve had enough of that. And maybe my voice added to that isn’t really helping. People don’t want to see that. I don’t know. There could be many other things going on that I’m not aware of, or it could be nothing. It could be nothing going on.
It could just be the natural rhythmic ups and downs. But definitely the last four months, there’s been a flatlining. I’m kind of at that point where I’m like, hmm, maybe around 2,600 subscribers is just as much as my Substack is going to get. I don’t know. I hope that’s not the case.
I know that I don’t have a niche. I know that I write about everything under the sun and I talk about everything under the sun, which is probably not the best as far as getting subscribers. But again, kind of lurching back to my main point, which was having doubt.
It casts doubt for me on my career as a writer. Like I just, or me as a writer... You know, it’s like for a long time, you know, I really, you know, you can listen to my, I think it was my first or second, I think, podcast.
I’ll put a link for that where I talked about self-publishing my first novel and the books I have published over the last few years and how I always, for a long time, I wanted to be traditionally published and I wanted an agent and I really tried and I never... I was never able to succeed.
And I don’t know why that is. You know, I’ve theorized that it could have to do with ideology, with being a white, straight male, like in our current publishing environment. I mean, I’ve had some pretty overt conversations with a few agents regarding my work and over the years and...
A few of those have suggested pretty strongly that that does, there’s an ideological angle there. And that can’t be all of it, right? I mean, of all the five, I don’t even know how many, five or 600 probably literary agent queries I’ve sent out for multiple books over the years. that have all been rejected.
And some have requested the full manuscript and read it. Some read it multiple times. I got some detailed responses praising the book and praising my writing, but still no agent. So the common factor here is me, right? Like maybe it just wasn’t good enough or maybe it was good enough, but it’s just the timing wasn’t right.
You know, maybe it’s just not... traditional published material or maybe who knows who knows you know maybe if it had been 10 20 years ago instead of 10 years ago and i started trying you know submitting to agents it would have happened either way i don’t really care nearly
as much anymore because i have self-published and i’ve done it my way and that feels a lot better i feel like i have more artistic integrity and more artistic control for me personally So in the end, that has kind of worked out.
But all of this stuff that I’m talking about, just sometimes I just feel doubt as a writer. I’m like, well, if I was really as talented as I thought I was, really as good of a writer as I thought I was, then why am I flattening out at 2,600 subscribers after over three years on Substack?
You know, I would have expected to be at 10 or 15,000 by now with a few hundred paying. And I have like You know, less than 70 paying and 2600. And I don’t know, maybe maybe all that’s besides the point, because true art, true literature, true writing, in my view,
isn’t about how much money you make from it or how many subscribers you have or don’t have. It’s about asking the bigger questions about the human condition and the human experience. about the mystery of what it means to be alive and to be human. And using your talent for language and the written word and the spoken word,
perhaps, to delve as deep as you can into that mystery and try to understand it and try to understand yourself and what it means to be alive on this planet. To write something that has at least some kind of potential to be universal and maybe even something that could last for a long time.
I’m not saying I’ve achieved that. I hope that at some point I can achieve it. I don’t know if I ever will. But I guess my point is the losing subscribers and all that stuff, it continues to cast that doubt on myself. You know,
and so I feel like this doubt as a sober member of AA and I feel this doubt as a writer sometimes, you know, and I mean, this is really vulnerable for me to say, but it’s like with travel. I know how privileged and lucky Brittany and I are for being able to be Americans living abroad.
You know, we live living in Madrid. It’s an incredible city. There’s so much art and culture and architecture and just food and everything here. And we’re we have a great apartment with three cats and we’re incredibly lucky. And we’ve been traveling a lot. I just dropped a piece on our trip to Sardinia and Italy.
We’ve been to Hungary and Poland and Slovakia and Ireland. And we’re going to Africa, to Kenya soon, I think in late January into early-ish February. But it’s like there’s also that insatiable part of me that... I want to travel the whole world. I want to go to every single continent, every single country.
I want to just constantly be traveling. And that’s just not our reality right now, partially because we have three cats and partially because it’s just not what both of us want to do. Like I wanted a big part of me wants to do it. Brittany would love to do it if we didn’t have the cats.
But it’s just kind of that’s not where we realistically are right now. But that’s another characterization of my nature, unfortunately, is like the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. What if this happened? What if that happened? What if I never get to go to all the places I want to go?
What if I never see all the things I want to see? It’s wanting to gobble up all these different experiences as if once I finally have all those experiences, I’ll finally be happy. I’ll finally be okay. And I know that’s not true. I know intellectually that’s not true. I know if I go to every continent, every country,
see everything there is to see, become a world famous author and the best member of AA ever, I know that I still wouldn’t be, it’s not going to fill that void because I think that void is speaking to something deeper, which is self-love and self-acceptance.
That’s basically the point that I always come back to is I have to learn to accept myself and love myself as I am exactly as I am and you know I’m a deeply flawed person I mean no one’s perfect obviously and we all have a past and we’ve
all made mistakes but it’s just the simple fact that I’m a I’m a deeply flawed person and I’ve definitely have a past and I’ve changed a lot in these 15 years and I’ve done the 12 steps and I’ve I’ve made amends with many, many people and I’ve come to terms with that past,
the person I used to be. And I’m not that person anymore. I mean, part of me will always be in there, but I’ve grown a lot. I’ve matured a lot. I’ve changed a lot. I’ve evolved. But I guess when I look back on it, it’s like I’ve never been satisfied in life.
There’s always been something I was looking for. And I guess for a while, I filled that void with alcohol and drugs. Also with, you know, a lot of sex with random women. Kind of meaningless sex. The usual things. Not so much money because I’ve always been fairly privileged and I come from a family with money.
And so money never seemed to me to be the thing. The thing that was going to magically fill me up on the inside. I’ve always felt doubt about family, about the concept of family, because my family is very small and we’re kind of very fractured. And, you know,
I have like my uncle and his partner slash best friend, our family friend for a long time. They’re in L.A. and my sister and brother-in-law are in LA. different part of LA and my niece and nephew are now both in college out in Davis
and my mom is in Santa Barbara and I’m here in Madrid and at this point the only one I’m really close with is my mom I’d like to be closer with my niece and nephew and hopefully I will occur over time but that’s just the way it is and Brittany comes from a really
a big family on two sides and she’s much closer with her family even though she has her issues with her family too everyone does but she’s got a much stronger sense of family ties than I do. And so I’m always filled with doubt in that way, too. Like, you know, in three months, I’m going to be 43.
I still feel pretty young. I still feel very pretty healthy and strong and whatever. But sometimes I think to myself, like, in 20 years, in 30 years, it’s going to be different. I mean, even in 10 or 15 years, it’s going to be different. I mean, my mom’s 75.
My dad is, you know, he passed away in 2023. My sister and I aren’t close. My uncle and I used to be close, but we aren’t anymore. So I’m married to Brittany, so I’m part of her family now, which is great. But again, I still feel that, like, push-pull.
Like, I want to be with her family and I want to be around her family and I want to do all that. And at the same time, it scares me and it... I don’t feel totally comfortable. So I didn’t really have any particular goal in talking about this stuff.
I guess I was just feeling like, you know, I went to a meeting earlier today. My mom comes tomorrow, like I said. Brittany and her mom and aunt are on a... They’re down in southern Spain right now along the coast for a couple days. So I’m by myself for just today.
And then my mom arrives tomorrow in the afternoon. And... Yeah. Just like going to the meeting, I felt like I was carrying this like spiritual anxiety with me, like almost spiritual poison in a way. Just, I don’t know, just feeling a little bit uncomfortable in my own skin,
like being around family and knowing that my mom’s coming and both being excited for that and also unsure about that. And, you know, I went to the meeting and I spoke up and I shared and it felt really good to get it off my chest and That was good. But it’s like, you know,
when I came into the meeting, even though I saw familiar faces, it’s like no one was really talking to me. And when I left, when the meeting was over, when I walked out, no one stopped and tried to talk to me. I don’t blame that on anybody. It’s nobody’s fault.
And nobody has a responsibility to make me feel safe or feel good or anything like that. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying, and again, it’s my fault. It’s 100% my own fault because I’m an outsider. I always make myself an outsider because... I always have one foot in, one foot out. So it’s just this,
you know, I look at people sometimes and I think like the people that are just well adjusted, which I’ve never been, and the people who are comfortable in their own skin all the time or most of the time and they have a lot of confidence and they’re able to be with people
their families and just freely give and accept love. Like, I admire that because it’s just not something that I’ve ever seemed to possess. And I don’t think that makes me a bad person and them good people or them bad people or me a good person or me. or anything, anything like that. It’s just who I am.
It’s part of who I am. You know, it’s part of the way that I was, that I was raised. I guess it’s part of the lessons and maybe the trauma, if you want to say that I was the generational trauma that was sort of in one way or another kind of handed down verbally or behaviorally to me,
because I think my parents felt a lot of the same stuff when they were growing up in different contexts and Yeah, but, you know, I have to also remind myself that doubt is an extremely human experience. We all experience doubt. And it’s okay to just feel uncomfortable in your own skin and to not feel like
you’re totally connected to a certain community or any community. I mean, that’s another thing is like for me, community has always been kind of a double-edged sword. I’ve always wanted to be a part of a community in theory. And I guess the closest I’ve ever gotten was the first few years.
I was years two to five, two to four in AA. And I guess still now, even though I’m not fully quote unquote in AA, it’s still a community and it’s still something I do feel broadly globally a part of. But the writing community has always been the same way. Like,
joined writing workshops or joined writing groups, but I’ve never really joined. You know what I mean? Like I’ve never really been totally involved, totally invested, totally a part of it. I’ve always been there when I feel safe and then not been there when I don’t feel safe or it always has to be on my terms.
I think a lot of my friendships have been like that too, to be honest, like they’re kind of on my terms. I want to be friends with people, but I want to communicate with them when I want and how I want, basically, more or less.
I’m probably being a little too hard on myself and I’m probably oversimplifying a little bit, but I think broadly speaking, that’s probably largely true. And that’s just, it’s just who I am. And when I say it’s just who I am, I don’t mean that I don’t have free will or free agency, personal agency.
I’m not saying that I can’t change that, but I think they’re deeply held behavioral patterns that go pretty far back. probably survival instincts and intuitions that I developed as a child growing up in many ways that I just haven’t been able to overcome for one reason or another.
But anyway, I think I’ve gone on for long enough at this point. I’m going to stop. But yeah, I mean, feel free to comment on the post if you feel like it. Maybe talk about your own experience with doubt in life and how you’ve overcome it. And I don’t know.
I just, I guess I am truly grateful to be alive. I do feel like life is a gift, even though sometimes it feels like a struggle. And I’m truly grateful to be sober. And I’m truly grateful to be a writer that’s had the level of success I have had
and who’s gotten a lot of stuff published and who’s got a decent little following on Substack. And I’m grateful that Even though I’m a difficult person and I’m a contrarian and I’m a pusher of boundaries in many ways, I think I know that I’m a good person. I know that I’m a good man.
I know that I’m complicated. I know that I’m intense and a lot of work. But overall, the whole package, I’m a good man. And that’s important to know. So I can be with all this doubt and still be good and still be free and still be okay. And it feels good to talk about it. So...
Yeah, I think that’s all I’ve got to talk about today. And hopefully you got something out of that. Hopefully you enjoyed it. Hopefully it resonated in some way. I will catch you on the next one. All right. Talk to you later. Bye.
