I had been spreading myself too thin. This was not an unusual state of affairs.
I had started a Substack newsletter and filled it with sections about cars, motorcycles, travel, television and anything else that wandered across my field of vision. The problem, as I saw it then, was that none of it fitted neatly together.
I did not have a niche.
I knew that I wanted to write. I also knew that the subject needed to grip me; otherwise, the words would become lifeless. At the same time, I did not want to spend the rest of my life being a grumpy bastard moaning about the world.
A noble ambition. Progress remains mixed.
I listed the things that interested me: forests, mountains, travel, family, writing, television, films, books, my weight, my place in society and the effects of growing up in a broken home.
Then I asked the internet what I should do with all of it.
Should I narrow my focus? Pick a subject? Choose a platform? Find the correct little box and climb inside it?
Most of all, I wanted to know how I could write about familiar subjects without becoming lost among all the other people writing about them. I wanted exposure. Readers. Perhaps even some evidence that I had not left it too late to become a writer.
Nearly six years later, I think I finally understand the problem.
I was looking for a subject when I should have been looking for a point of view.
Cars were never the niche. Neither were mountains, travel, health, family or any of the other interests I tried to organise into separate sections.
The connection between them was me.
That sounds massively self-important, but I do not mean it that way. I am not claiming that my life is more interesting than anyone elseโs. Most of it is wonderfully ordinary.
The niche is simply the view from where I am standing.
HKT can contain a house purchase, a strange dream, an insurance rejection, a remembered moment from childhood or a minor fluctuation in the machinery of everyday life. The subjects do not need to match. They have already been joined together by the fact that I noticed them.
Perhaps coherence is something that appears later, after enough fragments have accumulated.
I was also asking the wrong question about exposure.
I still hope people read what I write. I am human enough to look at the numbers, even while pretending not to care about them. But maximum exposure is no longer the point.
The point is to leave something behind.
I want Rhona and Karta to recognise me in these pages. I want the people who come after us to know that I was here, that I loved, worried, laughed, struggled, occasionally succeeded and frequently had no idea what I was doing.
I want them to meet the real version of me, not a polished character created to satisfy an audience or an algorithm.
That means allowing the journal to wander.
It means writing about whatever seems important on the day, even when I cannot yet explain why. Some entries will lead somewhere. Others will remain loose fragments. Memory itself works like that. It is full of gaps, wrong turns and things that return without warning.
So, what is my niche?
I suppose it is an imperfect record of one life, written while that life is still happening.
That is broad enough to contain everything.
And small enough to be mine.