HeyJaredThomas’s Substack
Every third Tuesday, I offer explorations into language, grief, and mystery.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 4
- Latest publication
- Sep 15, 2026
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- Jul 21, 2026
Latest issues
Symbols for the Continuing Journey (opens the original)
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Last March, when I was back in California, I told a friend that suddenly being single again just as I was entering my 70s felt like standing at the edge of a large forest. Nothing seemed mapped out, and I couldn’t see the direction I should take. When I returned from my trip and was back in my apartment, it also began to appear that I was standing in the middle of a community. The building I’m in is at the edge of a lot of woods on one side, and Walmart and a strip mall on the other. In this bui
Grief the Shadow (opens the original)
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I wrote a poem recently about returning to my job one week after losing my son. The poem draws on draws on what I remember of that day nine years ago, of walking back into a classroom after being away for a week, and standing before a silent class and not knowing what to say. I’d post the poem here, but I’m still working on it. What I remember vividly from that day is that to get to that class, I had to walk down a hallway past shelves of books of sociology that were part of what the university
The Last Poem in my Current WIP (opens the original)
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Friends, the following poem appeared in an online journal I read every morning. I currently have it as the final poem in my collection of grief poems about my son. Click here to read it. Thanks for reading Thomas’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.<input class="email-input" name="email" tabindex="
Rethinking Writing when the Usual Model Doesn't Help (opens the original)
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Sometimes I hear what sounds like people getting in their own way. It’s like me when I try to explain electricity. It comes up when a friend will talk about wanting to write something, usually a memoir, and I will hear what seem to be problematic, half-thought through models of writing. This is the word I would use to name model of writing I catch peeking out, even from people I know in academic circles: Writing is mainly an act of reporting. Reporting requires two stages: We write out our infor
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