Announcing Cronicle's New Remote Business Content Pivot

My goodness, where have we been? Well, on a Lake Michigan beach vacation... sort of!

We have had quite a journey during the pandemic, and that is being reflected in some changes to how we structured our business. If you would like to come along, I (Laura) would like to tell you about it.

When we started Cronicle as a media outlet in late 2018 early 2019, we (Archie and Laura) enjoyed highlighting personal stories of tech startup founders and tech workers as well as business support orgs around Ann Arbor and Detroit to show the amazing growth these cities have recently had emerging as startup hubs.

Then everything changed. And I do mean pretty much everything.

Originally we were building community in the tech community across Ann Arbor, Detroit, and then the Great Lakes region. We met amazing investors and CEOs from a variety of tech-related industries and really enjoyed helping people network and find collaborators or events and communities to join. Little known fact: we almost bought a hotel to accommodate more community get-togethers, like a bed and breakfast version of a coworking space! Then, COVID hit, and thank goodness we didn't buy an inn right before the world stayed home for two years.

Archie and I really enjoyed being home at the beginning of the pandemic, and wanted to share the fun we had starting a huge 60'x100' fenced garden which we wanted to turn into some kind of community farm or flower farm. Then, I got really sick. Like, in the ER every 4-8 weeks with hemorrhaging, anaphylaxis, mystery immune reactions no one could name, and fainting, you name it. Eventually I found out that there is a chronic genetic illness that runs in the family, and our dear daughter has it too. It was a couple of years ago when she collapsed with similar symptoms after simply eating tropical fruit and being exposed to wildfire smoke that we got answers. And we had to fight our way to some extremely high-level specialists to find anyone who took us seriously, so this phase took a while -- and it took a toll.

Turns out, pretty much everything I was attempting early in my career was bad for my health condition. Long story short, this huge transformation prompted us to change our plans as a family. I remember one day sitting in the hospital yet again being told I had anxiety but also my gallbladder was so rotten it could kill me, and I realized that nothing was worth this kind of suffering year in year out at unpredictable intervals. I have lost jobs to migraines, back injury that almost put me in a wheelchair while raising a baby, and so on. It was time to make some changes. Changes my brain had been hinting at for years.

We almost bought a half-built mansion during this time, almost bought another house, almost moved more times than I care to remember. Almost started thinking about going overseas since American work culture is so incredibly hostile (whether conscious about it or not) to people with invisible disabilities. All this against the backdrop of what a wonderful experience I had for the most part working with all of you in tech and tech-adjacent startups doing content marketing and media. It was time for the business to change, but more than anything, it was time for me to change.

I had a background of pretty gnarly childhood neglect and psychological trauma and child endangerment that made it challenging to UN-trigger all the health problems that had started up, as most of these problems are sleeping giants until you do something like, say, almost die a bunch of times and end up exhausted. Then it's a bad scene, and I will spare you the details but COVID didn't help an already loaded situation for our family. Suffice it to say I met amazing intelligent and kind people along the way through this medical journey and business journey, but I lost some friends to this illness (Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, MCAS, POTS and similar conditions related to wonky connective tissue: same thing Halsey has, and singer Sia). It was probably one of the most challenging decisions of my life to trust my husband Archie to carry me through an illness none of us understood, given this syndrome has barely begun to be researched and that childhood trauma and PTSD was konking me in the head with a constant fear of trusting again. Can you trust you will be taken care of when your life story is punctuated with nearly constant betrayal and sabotage from family and employers or colleagues, despite all the good experiences that came along with and incredible healing wisdom you collected and paid forward along the way? At one point, I thought I would be a coach of business owners to help them stay healthy like I had to learn to because it took intense research to figure out what was happening and that would be good to pay forward to others, but as soon as I set up shop I got sick again. Really sick. This time it wasn't worth it, but the opportunity to get healthy again had been staring me in the face the whole time, I just hadn't trusted myself or life enough to go for what I really wanted and needed: a more relaxed writer lifestyle with access to a temperate beach climate like Lake Michigan to handle increasing heat waves in the U.S.

In the back of my mind, I knew I wanted to get back to publishing fantasy fiction again asap, and run a flower farm, and invest in real estate, and and and. But I could barely get out of bed half the time and my throat closed daily. It wasn't working out. Then, I remembered all the glowups I've had in the past that also had no explanation at the time: losing 40 pounds virtually overnight and losing 3 dress sizes (oy the jealous drama and stalkers, but it was a generally good change), learning kung fu and swimming laps to keep my body together and functioning. It was a full-time job to take care of myself. I couldn't think of taking care of others anymore. In fact it has more than a little to do with how badly I burned out that I spent most of my early career as a climate tech and wellness journalist trying to save everybody from themselves. As many of you know, working in journalism and climate news in particular is one of the most stressful positions out there next to war zone physician. I realized that the vision I had in my mind of writing on the beach and having more fun after years of heavy stress on our family was more than a pipe dream I couldn't pay for: it was my intuition showing me what lifestyle would work.

The Lake Michigan Vacation Rental: Silversides House, Muskegon

Reader, we actually did it. We read up on business and investing and real estate, we swapped out recommendations on learning resources to sort out all our decisions, and now after several years of incredible growth and change for our family (still 0 out of 5 stars, would not recommend), we have unyoked my income from my work hours to create more passive income through real estate rental properties near the sugar sand beaches of Lake Michigan, I'm writing speculative fiction again and building up both this blog as a business human interest-oriented storytelling site and a way to help us continue to build community online as remote workers in tech and business -- and we bought our first rental house near Lake Michigan!

And we would love to share the journey -- and Silversides House in Muskegon -- with all of you. Heads up: This property just listed and is already partially booked for the summer from last-minute bookings. This will likely be our first and last summer with lots of openings for renters. If you want to join us on this journey and take your own remote work vacation to beat the heat wave of 2024, come visit us. There is a coffee shop (The Coffee Factory) across the street, a sandwich shop (Fatty Lumpkins) on the corner, and a public marina, dog park, nature trail, and Lake Muskegon on the other side of the building across the street that is being converted to luxury condos. Lake Michigan and Hoffmaster State Park, Pere Marquette park by the Muskegon Pier, Kruz Dog Beach, and many more local beaches and attractions such as the ferry to Milwaukee are just a short drive several blocks west. We hope you will both support our business and enjoy this journey with us. Silversides House, named after a WWII submarine museum in nearby port, is located in a super peaceful chill city neighborhood in the middle of a revival, along with the rest of Muskegon. Like us, this city is on up the upswing and is now hosting the Great Lakes Surf Festival, volleyball competitions, bass fishing stops on a national tour, Muskegon Pride, various music festivals, and more, all just a few blocks from our little house.

What Cronicle Is Changing This Year:

Maybe I will tell this story in pieces on Cronicle as we go along, but where do we go from here? For one, to the beach! Even while setting up the rental house and putting it under property management this spring challenged my limits on travel and physical labor, I had so much fun pivoting this business and building what I thought would take until retirement to achieve -- a sustainable healthy lifestyle. Just a couple hours at the beach is so energizing and relaxing and nurturing for my situation in particular, I can't wait to share the journey AND the rental house with you.

So, if you would like to come along with me and my family and a few new team members like our Cronicle writer Tim Busbey who will continue to write for this blog interviewing business owners on how they are navigating these interesting times and shifting business landscape, I would love to share our story and the stories of business owners in this lovely Great Lakes state of Michigan with you. We will still be here sharing business stories, but there are a few key differences:

1. The tone is going to be more personal. We aren't any longer attempting to build a media organization that scales. Instead we are building a niche remote business that is as efficient as possible, and as chill as we can manage after the nightmare we have all collectively lived these past few years.

2. We will be advertising our rental house for anyone who would love to visit. We have more plans on how the beach vacation rental scene and our published writings will fit together in the future, and it should be great fun. For now, I'll just say thank you for your continued support, and if this is where we part ways, no hard feelings. I certainly never planned on all these changes and expect a moderate shift in our audience and community as we embrace remote workers, independent contractors in real estate and creative fields, and more along with our usual business and tech stories about how the Great Lakes is growing.

Where Is This Rental Cottage Near Lake Michigan?

We won't talk directly about our rental properties too often here and will keep an ad space up longterm to keep things low pressure and focused on stories you will love about business owners and remote workers like yourself, but if you are looking for a remote work vacation to beat the brutal heat waves repeatedly punishing the United States this summer,

Silversides House Is Now Available for Remote Work & Workcations. It's pet friendly and just a few blocks from Muskegon Lake's public boat launch, several restaurants, downtown's vinyl shops and cannabis dispensaries, and multiple pet-friendly Lake Michigan beaches nearby. It's super peaceful, fully equipped with fiber high-speed internet, and we hope you will enjoy it as much as we are and get the same recuperation benefit I have already from owning this property.

We hope you will come along for the journey! Thank you as always for your continued support and friendship. More on all our news in our next post.