A Look Back at 2024
Out with the old, in with the New (Year)
Man, what an eventful year 2024 turned out to be! Twenty-three weeks of vet school locums, including one where I was hospitalized for pneumonia. Travel to lecture in France, Mexico, and multiple conferences within the US. The unsettling spread of bird flu on dairy farms. A ballot initiative that will reshape vetmed in the US forever. Interviewing a former Auburn vet student of mine. Launching the Continuing Education Center. Two hurricanes hit Tampa! A disappointing election I’m still processing. I reviewed a handful books and even wrote my first movie review.
Oh, and we adopted a new dog!
Kali was a stray in the Bahamas who was going to be put down by animal control. My wife was doing charity work on the island through the non-profit BluePearl Cares when they found her living in the bushes outside the Marriott. She was extremely shy and infected with both heartworm and a tick-borne disease called Ehrlichia. What was supposed to be a “temporary foster”—always a dubious claim for vets—soon turned into a permanent member of our family. Today, she is a healthy weight, disease-free, and loves to play with our other cats and dogs ❤️
How It Started / How It’s Going
I first started writing All Science Great & Small in the summer of 2022. At the time, I was working in a corporate management job that was not a great fit, and this newsletter provided a sorely needed creative outlet. My initial readership at the time I went on hiatus was a mere 22 subscribers (all friends and family). Since restarting in April 2023, the All Science audience has steadily grown. Today, about 1,300 people opt-in to read my online ramblings, nearly three-times as many as December 31, 2023.
Overall article views have likewise increased. While there is a lot of variability, it is often 7,000-10,000 a month. This generally works out to a fair bit more post views than subscribers, so I know there is a population of people who lurk and read without subscribing—all good to me! This audience may be small compared to legacy media outlets, but my readers are passionate and engaged. I’m proud to report my subscribers include include prominent vet school faculty and deans, AVMA and state VMA leaders, and influential industry insiders.
As much as I want to take credit for this growth, much of it comes from you, the readers who share my work through email forwards and social media. Substack also provides a number of powerful tools to boost discoverability for publications, especially the Recommendations system. Indeed, it has driven over a third of my subscriptions to date! SEVENTEEN Substacks currently recommend All Science, and I want to thank all of them, especially my top five referrers:
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Next, I want to be transparent about the financial side of this Substack. Education, not money, has always been my primary mission with this newsletter; I did not even turn on paid subscriptions until a year into writing (summer 2023). That said, as an independent consultant, the revenue does help bridge the gap between lulls in contract work, and also allows me donate to my local humane society (just under $500 in 2024).
Year-over-year revenue (~$2,200 gross) increased almost 3x, nearly proportional to overall subscriber growth. Most of that came in Q3 and Q4. This does not surprise me because in September, I quietly dropped my pricing schedule from $7/month → $5, and $70/year → $50. This was an experiment to see if the lower price would drive more upgraded subscriptions and the data seems to indicate an unequivocal YES.
I’m truly grateful for everyone who decides to support my work financially. Many people writing on the internet never see a dime for their efforts, and this revenue is a wonderful vote of confidence. While this amount of money cannot solely support me today, I can see a path to it becoming my primary job in a few years. And besides the direct income, this Substack has opened a number of doors for me to speak around the world, which has been amazing.
Now, before I get into post highlights and a look forward to 2025, I have a brief request: If you could take a moment to fill out my reader survey, it would be extremely helpful to let me better understand my audience and their content preferences. The survey is just 7 questions, mostly multiple choice, and only one is required. People have told me they were able to complete it in 1-2 minutes. TIA to anyone who is able to help out! 🙏
Highlights of the Year
This year I published 52 long-form articles, not counting cross-posts from other Substacks. Sometimes there were multiple posts per week, other times there were gaps; overall it still worked out to an average of weekly publishing. This was somewhat less frequent than in 2023 (which was usually twice a week and sometimes 3x), and represented a deliberate change in strategy—in last year’s survey you indicated that you cared more about quality than quantity, and I decided to lean into that.
I asked ChatGPT to analyze the themes of articles this year based on their titles and this is what it came up with:
As you can see, the topics were similar to last year, including a particular focus on artificial intelligence. Many of the posts lumped into the “Other” category concerned human and/or veterinary medicine, although they were often interdisciplinary and harder to classify.
Now, here are some of the top posts of the year based on metrics and/or “vibes” …
Most viewed
This piece about Prop 129 and the veterinary professional associate (VPA) position in Colorado is about as close to a viral hit as I’ve had on Substack: It has been viewed over 8,000 times, more than 8x my other popular posts. It has been shared 140 times and was linked to by the AVMA and CVMA websites. While this ballot initiative passed (against the wishes of me and most veterinarians), I stand by my arguments and will continue to follow the VPA issue as it unfolds.
Most engagement + new subscriptions
You can never predict which articles will be a hit. Case in point, I wrote this one quickly in reaction to seeing a veterinary influencer going full-on cringe to please the algorithms on YouTube and didn’t expect too much. However, it really resonated with people, generating a ton of comments and netting 19 new subscriptions (typical articles will get a small handful, the VPA one above brought in 16 new folks).
Favorite & most personal
Back in February, I wrote about my multi-year journey discovering I was donor conceived for the literary publication
. At almost 4,000 words, it was my longest article by a significant margin, yet it was widely read and commented on. I was particularly touched by the stories multiple readers shared with me:“Thank you for sharing your story. I, too, am an NPE and the memoir I’ve written is all about this discovery, its aftermath, and the psychological underpinnings that complicated it all... It’s so hard to understand why something that “changes everything but changes nothing” can feel so destabilizing. I so relate to your experiences and am glad you kept pursuing in order to know the truth.”
***
“I’m 66 years old and 5 years ago I did my DNA test through 23 & me and also Ancestry. My cousin who also did hers ended up not being my cousin. But I found new cousins I had no idea about… the consequences of finding all of this out and my mom not wanting to tell me is very disorienting. I loved reading your story. Thanks.”
***
“Thank you for this well-written and compelling story. I am part of a research team developing a tool that parents who have used IVF can use to help in the process of disclosing origins to their child. Your story is very consistent with the research on adults who have not learned of their origins as adopted persons until adulthood — known as "Late Discovery Adoptees" in the literature. They report feelings such as yours — as if the floor had fallen out from underneath them, and, as you noted, their identity had been upended. Thanks for your writing”
What’s in Store for 2025?
I’m excited to think about the year ahead for All Science. There will definitely be more pieces on AI, debunking medical misinformation, and keeping tabs on the veterinary industry. I have several planned collaborations with other Substackers in the works, including an interview with one of my recommending newsletters, a guest post with a physician this spring, and potentially a veterinary podcast episode (if that one ever comes out… 🤔). If you have a specific topic you’d like to see me cover, let me know in the survey, comments, or by emailing allscience@substack.com.
As for me personally, I like to set an intention for each year. The co-working space and business collective I belong to in Tampa has an annual holiday party where people write their goals or resolutions on a giant poster.
In 2023, my intention was “Align my job with my values”. That led me to quit the corporate job I couldn’t stand and set out on the independent journey I’m still on today. This past spring I got a traditional swallow tattoo to commemorate the thousands of miles of travel and as a reminder to always follow my moral compass.
For 2024, my mantra was to “Let go of ego!!” Besides my deliberate attempts at humility, life took me down a few pegs in several ways. For one, I was rejected from several dream jobs I applied to. Then there was the object lesson in human frailty and vulnerability that came from being hospitalized over the summer:
This coming year, I want to…
FOCUS ON ART
As we close out 2024, there is plenty of turmoil and uncertainty in this country (some have called it “The Darkest Timeline”). Higher education, research funding, and healthcare are likely to be thrown into chaos. There will be huge changes to student loan borrowers like myself. A potential pandemic is simmering in the background with H5N1 spreading unchecked around the world. An explosion of new vet schools and an influx of midlevel practitioners are likely to disrupt veterinary medicine. And I still don’t have a stable full-time job.
All of these things are out of my control. But what I can control is how I respond. I’m going to step back from consuming as much news and social media and double-down on writing and reading books (especially fiction). I will spend more time practicing guitar, hopefully getting back to jamming with other local musicians. Throughout all of this, I’ll be re-centering my relationships with friends and family. There is still much beauty to savor in turbulent times.
Despite the many challenges ahead, I’m looking forward to 2025.
Hope you all have a safe and Happy New Year! 🥳
Great review and a great year of writing! Thank you. I hope 2025 brings more success and inspiration. It has the potential to be wild in all kinds of feral cat ways. Love swallows,easily my favorite birds! Happy new year!