I'm writing again

No, I haven’t disappeared. You could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, seeing as I haven’t written in forever. But I am, in fact, still around. 

So, why the absence?

Well, a year after mom passed, and a month after Julia and I told our families we were getting married, I was diagnosed with cancer – just like mom, although I was much younger. (Turns out I’m part of a scary trend – colorectal cancer is appearing in younger and younger Americans, although no one’s quite sure why.)

It's been four years since my diagnosis and the big picture is things are going well. Chemo, radiation and a couple of major surgeries have kept the cancer away. But those life-saving treatments also left their mark, and navigating my new reality has been a journey.

One of the hardest realizations has been that I can’t produce the same level of journalism anymore. That’s because doing so requires endless hours of being still – first in the researching, then in the writing and endless re-writing. And being still for that long, I’ve come to learn, is a recipe for disaster. I do much better when I move a lot. (Towards that end, I’ve begun wading into the world of triathlons.)

I’ve wanted to say these things for a while, but the moment never felt quite right, the ground beneath me never quite solid enough. It’s only recently that I’ve felt ready to write again with any consistency.

So... you can expect to hear from me with some regularity going forward, albeit mostly via shorter and more opinionated pieces – with some exceptions. Like my just-published story at FAIR, “WaPo Owes an Apology to the DC Mayor It Drove From Office.”

Oh, and one other change: my writings, like this one, will now be coming to you via Substack (so check your spam folders).

Lastly, thanks for reading these emails over the years. It means more than you know.

- Pete