About Faark, I Hope It’s Not Too Late
Not Dead Yet And Neither Are Your Ambitions
If you’ve ever sat in a meeting, stared out the window and thought “Faark, I hope it’s not too late for me to do something that actually matters”, you’re in the right place.
I’m Alan. Lifelong generalist, serial career reinventor, based in Auckland. I started this because I was ready to stop pretending that coasting to retirement was enough.
Who it’s for
You’ve managed teams, budgets, crises, egos. (Herding cats comes to mind.) Decades of experience, a CV that looks impressive, and a quiet suspicion that the interesting version of you got filed away in a drawer somewhere and never came back out.
You’re allergic to hype, motivational fluff, and pitches that sound like late-night infomercials. You appreciate directness, sharp ideas and a good laugh no matter how hard the road gets.
Sound familiar? Good.
What you get
A newsletter every Sunday. Around 700 words on midlife reinvention, independent media, and doing your best work later than the timeline said you should. Once a month I hand the whole issue over to recommendations: books, podcasts, documentaries, media moves worth your attention.
And a podcast, where I talk to people who have actually done it. Anna Fifield reported for the Financial Times and ran the Washington Post’s Beijing bureau, then lost the job and had to work out what came next. Phil Walters turned a steel bird cut in his shed into a global business. James Russell built an international publishing operation from his garage. Jane Dent talked her way into running media for the All Blacks on a mantra of fake it till you make it.
No hustle culture. No 10x anything. No morning routines.
Why me
I’ve ping-ponged across careers, built things up, torn things down, and had my own late-night “is it too late” spirals.
For years I felt like a fraud for not being a lawyer or an accountant or an engineer. Specialists were the serious people. I was the bloke who was good at several unserious things. It took me an embarrassingly long time to work out that joining the dots between worlds is its own skill.
Start here
The Rough Cut. Most of my early issues were terrible. Here’s why I sent them anyway.
QTN (Quality, Taste and Nuance). In a world of infinite content, caring is the competitive advantage.
Dust on Her Boots. Anna Fifield on losing the job and finding the work.
Subscribe below. Reply to anything, I read the lot.
There is a paid option though, and here’s why. Money is one way to say the work landed. So if Faark I Hope It’s Not Too Late is worth a coffee a month to you, you can back it and I’ll be genuinely chuffed. If it’s not, read on anyway. You’re exactly who I’m writing for either way.
