The Room Got Smaller

A Friday note from the desk

A year ago I was nobody.

I had a substack with a handful of readers and a stack of manuscripts nobody had asked for. Writing into the void. Sending dispatches to an empty inbox. Then something caught fire and suddenly thousands of people were reading my work.

I kept writing. But I stopped editing myself for whoever happened to be listening. I’d been circling something for years, a conviction I carried but kept at arm’s length because I knew what it would cost me. The work I actually wanted to do, the books, the essays, the stories, all of it traced back to a figure I’d been taught to ignore, or worse, to associate with buildings I’d already left.

Jesus.

The carpenter who walked out of a backwater village and said things so dangerous the empire and the religious establishment teamed up to kill him, and then his own followers spent two thousand years burying what he actually meant under committees and cathedrals and culture wars.

I started writing about Him. And the room got smaller.

The numbers tell the story. My political essays average 500,000 views, my historical essays pull 250,000 views. My biblical essays pull 10,000. Same craft, same conviction underneath.

People left. Good.

I didn’t make it about religion. I walked away from religion years ago. What I walked toward was a man and a story and a set of ideas that nobody in any church I ever attended actually taught me. When I finally connected to His life and teachings, the actual account of what he did and said and why, it wrecked me. Recognition so sharp it felt like memory.

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I’ve published eight books since Christmas. Worked on them for six months and shipped them in three. I have five more completed manuscripts ready to go over the next few months. Nixon drops next week.

Eve and Nephilim right behind it.

I’m exhausted in my body. I’m not tired in my spirit. What’s the difference?

Tired is when you’re doing something that drains you. Exhausted is when you’ve poured everything into something that fills you back up. I don’t wake up thinking I have to do this. I wake up knowing I get to do this.

That’s a gift most people never find.

I had offers. A well-known media operation wanted to platform me. Big audience, instant reach, the kind of boost that looks like a shortcut. I turned it down because I didn’t trust the people. And my gut was right.

My early content was useful to certain interests. I know now it got boosted by people with large followings and military-adjacent audiences. When they realized I wasn’t going to be a reliable friendly voice, the boost dried up.

I’m grateful for that too.

It sorted the room faster than I could have sorted it myself.

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For you still here, reading and sharing and commenting, you’re the real ones.

You didn’t stay because some influencer or algorithm told you to. You stayed because something landed. A book. One line in one essay that said the thing you’d been thinking but hadn’t heard anyone else say out loud. Maybe you left the building too. Walked away from the church or the tradition and kept the part that was real.

This post is a thank you.

Thank you.

I say it the way you say it to someone who showed up when showing up cost something. You read the work. You send the messages. You buy the books for people you love. You share the essays because you know they’re true.

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My wife asked me if it bothered me when the crowd thinned.

I told her about a certain hillside. A certain man stood on it and five thousand people showed up. He fed them. He taught them. The biggest crowd, the most attention, the closest He’d ever come to what the world calls success.

The next day, he said something the crowd didn’t want to hear. True and costly. They left in droves. The gospels say it plainly.

Many of his followers turned back and no longer walked with him.

He looked at the twelve who remained. He didn’t chase the crowd. He didn’t soften the message.

He asked: “Are you going to leave too?”

Peter said: “Where else would we go? You have the words of life.”

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But the hillside wasn’t the test. Gethsemane was the test.

The garden. Late. Alone. The twelve couldn’t stay awake. He asked them to keep watch and they fell asleep three times. The man who’d given the greatest teaching in human history was kneeling in the dirt asking his Father if there was any other way, and the people closest to him on earth couldn’t keep their eyes open for one hour.

He went anyway.

That’s the part I think about when I look at the numbers. Not the crowd leaving. The going anyway. I could write essays on current geopolitical events for the rest of my life and watch the numbers climb. I’d rather write about the man underneath all of it and watch the right people find their way here.

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The room got smaller. The work got deeper.

And what’s left is cleaner than anything I’ve built before.

Still with me? Let’s keep building.

<3 EKO

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A gift for the ones who stayed.

Nixon: Sealed Testimony drops next week.

The first two chapters are yours, free, before anyone else sees them.

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If this work matters to you and you want to support it directly, with no middleman and no percentage taken: buy me a coffee

I love you.