I started this website in 2007. Following the example of other bloggers who maintained careers and wrote on the side, I published anonymously and avoided details about myself. I’ve changed the name of the website three times, preferring Chicago Fog for both its simplicity and reference to where I live. Writing was a hobby. I read a lot and stayed informed, I had studied law, finance. history, and political philosophy. I thought I had something to contribute to the world. Fast forwarding to today, I don’t have as much confidence about my “POV” on anything. I’ve had too many starts and stops. By the time I write-up a “hot take” the newsiness has passed. I used to allow for comments, but I never got any worth keeping. Short stories remain unfinished. Books to review pile up. Now I think the lesson was clear: I may have some talent but I’m just an average American guy, a nobody who lives at the edges of Chicagoland.

I’m less worried about anonymity because I my thirty-year career in healthcare industry as a transactions specialist and strategist is nearing its end. My desire to be in Corporate America fades a bit more every year. While I truly believe you can never have too much money, the opportunity cost to my passions is hard to accept. Also, as you get older you start feeling like you are being pushed aside. I’ll refrain from mentioning my current employer, but I’ll just say my division has a leadership team that’s both younger and shares the same extroverted personality. A mutual admiration society, it’s just a big group of friends where enthusiasm and attitude trump experience and knowledge. I’m at dispositional disadvantage not to mention the wrong side of 40. Besides, I never fit into organizations that required uniformity. I should be angrier, but I think this is just what you get from Corporate America in the 2020s: on the surface, a distorted imitation of Silicon Valley culture’s “move fast and break things” alongside short-lived tactics to show growth; at its heart, bureaucratic groupthink and an insular culture. Corporate America is where intellectual curiosity goes to die.

I think you embrace death when you decide to stop learning. Maybe that’s a small something that sets me apart–not better, only different. Despite all of the criticism leveled at higher education, in 2018 I decided to pursue formal training as an historian. I’ve studied at University of Illinois Chicago and then Northern Illinois University. As of the end of 2023 I’m close to finishing a master’s degree in history. Maybe I’ll write an essay about the whole experience, but my return to academia as the old guy sitting in graduate seminars proved incredibly rewarding. Part of navigating the experience was being careful about picking courses and professors. I’m certain the vast majority of fellow grad students and faculty would count themselves on the political left, but my personal experience was nothing like the caricatures of universities perpetuated by right wing social media. The vast majority of people I met were smart, curious, and intellectually honest. That said, it’s clear to me social histories emphasizing social justice, anti-colonialism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Americanism are still all the rage in history departments. The subjects I wanted to study–political history, economic history, diplomatic history, intellectual history–ended up being more self-directed, really just a function of the depth and breadth of faculty at NIU. I want to pursue a PhD and will need to consider universities with larger, more intellectually diverse faculties.

I started to put historical essays from my studies on Chicago Fog. I think those posts are a mixed bag. I have the feeling as time goes on, I’ll add many BB Regrets. Still, I think historical work is far more meaningful than movie and TV reviews (features from the website’s first configuration). Academic writing has more heft than opinion and editorial, not to mention silly takes on pop culture. This is why I still write book reviews (though I moved them into the background because they seemed boring, good for references but not deserving space on the front page).

Why would a gainfully employed man in his fifties chase another degree? Somewhere along the line my heterodox beliefs inspired intellectual curiosity and creativity. As I’ve written before (but always bears repeating), I consider myself a Burkian anarchist with a heavy dose of atheism. I’m a conservative who supports maximum individual freedom and an orderly transition to a stateless world. I’m very much a creature of liberalism: a libertine, a world citizen, a lover of materialism and technology, and a fan of multiculturalism. While I don’t belong to any specific ideological camp, it may be more accurate to say I could be home in many camps.

I admit that by today’s standards I have little to show for my pursuits. What is this website? Who am I? Today everything amounts to social media engagement–views, impressions, likes, downloads, etc.–a game of sustaining momentum, playing for the algorithm, a world where all that matters is being talked about. Continuous affirmation of status, I tweet therefore I am. Status and title are social constructs perpetuated by media. In movies, TV, and novels we’re exposed to archetypes conveying Platonic ideals: the public intellectual, the professor, the ideologue. I’m none of those things. Instead, I’ve followed the example set by Jonah Goldberg in two ways: being part of the Remnant as described by Albert Jay Nock, and the idea that writing is just like throwing a message in a bottle into the ocean.

Everything is a process. It’s all a journey with no destination. I used Chicago Fog to find my way through multiple subjects. However, I don’t see very much value in many subjects I’ve tried to tackle on this website. For example, my essays on US politics simply don’t add anything new or original. I’m not well-read enough in political philosophy or economics. But what would I rather do? I’ve heard public declarations are a way to help you keep commitments, so this particular message in a bottle will have some.

I want to write more often. Right now I want to spend my time writing fiction, studying American diplomatic history in the 20th century, and understanding the history of the US healthcare industry. In the future, I’d like to write more about US constitutional law and US and geopolitics. We’ll see how I’ll do.

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