“Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.”

—Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I was on vacation in Rhode Island last week. We spent Wednesday morning at a beach called Gooseberry beach, which provided a refreshing juxtaposition to the more chaotic shorelines of an increasingly overrun Newport.

Situated in a cove and further protected by an island, the rougher waters of the Atlantic do not penetrate here; making for a beach experience in which you could actually hear your own thoughts. Both of our girls, despite being 15 months and 3 years-old, were able to romp around near the water without my wife and I having a perpetual panic attack. As far as any experience with two toddlers goes, our time at this beach was eerily reminiscent of an adjective I have almost forgotten; relaxing.

As Older Daughter was “swimming” (walking) in the water looking for rocks, I was able to allow my mind to drift. I began to think more deeply about the purpose of this newsletter.

It was initially started as an outlet to channel my thoughts on parenting during this chaotic season of life. Having spent a previous although also sort of fake writing career at the behest of social networking algorithms and a brutal competitive dashboard known as chartbeat, I was no longer interested in putting out pieces to primarily serve arbitrary external benchmarks. I wanted to write on my own terms, and this was my way of doing so .

Yet, I was about to publish a “repost” (last week’s post) for no reason other than to feed this same beast. In wanting this newsletter to “do well” as determined by Beehiiv as opposed to my own metrics of quality, I was left with an increasingly bad taste in my mouth.

While crafting these posts, there have been a number of ideas that I’ve sidelined because they aren’t exactly about parenting per se. Or, like delectable barbecue ribs, they require longer marination than the Millennial Dad Journal publishing schedule allows.

I’ve thus decided to do the following:

Admin note: I’ll be moving the subscriber list from Millennial Dad Journal over to Substack. If you don’t want to make this jump, simply respond to this email and I’ll remove you.

Not that anyone cares either way (although based on one-on-one convos, I know a few of you are probably interested), but I’m not really making this change because I think substack is a better platform. In fact, I find the social media-first aspect of substack enormously depressing. It makes me feel like I’m back in 2014 trying to figure out how to impress media cool kids while also being myself, a near impossible needle that I have no desire to thread.

I have been mostly satisfied with Beehiiv, and have been particularly impressed with their ability to help clients grow without having to use social media. Many of their services cost money, but if your newsletter succeeds, the ROI could be quite high. I’ve been less impressed/more annoyed with their obsession with quality-degrading AI and their gamification of everything. But that’s more of a 2026 problem than a Beehiiv problem.

Ultimately, I’ve realized that Beehiiv isn’t really set up for writers as much as it is for Morning Brew style newsletters (Beehiiv was created by a bunch of guys who used to work at Morning Brew). For Millennial Dad Journal to “succeed” under this model, it would make more sense for this newsletter to “pivot” to a 5-6 section templated email that tries to build a media ecosystem community around a particular point of view; dad gear recs, quotes, a podcast, a summary of some parenting study, etc.

I know that if keep this on beehiiv, the striver malady that I (and most millennials) have been afflicted with will incentivize me to do more of this type of thing; I’ve already felt myself starting to think in this way, which is why I’m self-sabatoging any potential “success” of Millennial Dad Journal now as opposed to later, when I’m staying up late to interface with a mandatory AI agent to format a newsletter that makes me $7,500 a year and is more of a burden than a source of creative joy.

I wouldn’t hate doing all of the above as a job, but I’m not looking to be a founder of fledgling media company with two young kids for no income. I want to write; a practice I have become more serious about to maintain my sanity. Substack, for all of its flaws and my apprehension about hopping back over there, is actually intended for writers.

Thank you for sticking with me on this journey, and see you in a few weeks.

-Lance