♪♫ Here’s a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares) ♪♫
Notes from the 1st Three Months of a Dynamic Year
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Country-rock singer Travis Tritt scored a hit in 1991 with “Here’s a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares).” I think of this song often, because it’s the only song I know with the word “quarter” in the title.
Any time quarterly reports or quarterly notes or quarter/quarterly *anything* pops up, my mind instantly sings the title line to the song. The lyrical hook is a nod to payphones, which were everywhere in 1991 and almost nowhere by the middle of the 2000s. The song seems like a time capsule to me. Looking back on it in 2025, it speaks of dynamic change.
The song had a popular music video on TV — music videos on TV, like payphones, were everywhere in 1991 — that I’ll embed here (it’s also available at this link):
For those of you who weren’t alive yet in the prior century, I’m not kidding: People used to have to put coins into a slot on a public phone in order to make a call. And a quarter was a lot of money! Payphones, I’m told, used to run on dimes, but due to the constant devaluing of the U.S. dollar — monetary inflation leading to eventual price inflation! — quarters replaced dimes as the go-to unit for pay-as-you-go calls.
While I admit that “Here’s a quarter” makes a better song lyric than “Here’s a dime,” inflation still stinks.
Soon, technological advances would make payphones obsolete and drive down the cost of transmitting voice and other data. Price deflation can be a sign of great progress, as has consistently been the case in the relatively free markets for electronics and digital products.
So, why is this song on my mind now? Because, what a year the first quarter of 2025 has been here at this little ol’ Substack!
I’ve seen other writers doing quarterly retrospectives for their Substacks, and since I’m always looking for ideas, this seems like a fun one to try, especially in light of what the first fourth of this year has wrought.
New arrivals, new benchmarks
The “Good Neighbor, Bad Citizen” Substack had many positive developments during the January-February-March block, all driven by the response from readers and listeners!
After promising late last year that I’d explore premium content some time in 2025, I launched FM Radio in early January. I’m glad to be able to provide extra content as a thank-you to premium subscribers, without taking away any regular content from everyone else.
I’m also refining Sunday Buffet podcast. One big challenge I gave myself is to become more consistent with the format and to keep the total run time under 30 minutes. Fingers crossed, but I’ve hit a groove with the 13 episodes in 2025, getting seven of them to be 29:##, including all five shows in March.
This is important to me, because Sunday Buffet features only one speaker — no interview guests, co-hosts, live call-ins, etc. — and half an hour seems like the limit for how long you should have to listen to me talk to myself. Even I get bored of my own voice after more than 30 minutes!
Best of the written word
As invigorating as it’s been for me to produce a podcast and a premium meditation every week, the thing I still spend the most time on is my Wednesday Wakeup article.
Being that I’m old enough to have used payphones, writing was my first foray into creating content for publication (back before we called it “content”).
Drafting and self-editing my essays, and deciding late last year to add more artwork to them, takes me back to my newspaper days. As much effort as it requires for a non-visionary like me to come up with a good idea each week, it brings me joy to work through my own limitations to craft a written piece with photos and other visuals.
Here are the ones that resonated most with y’all during the first quarter, according to Substack stats:
Most Views and Most Comments and Most New Subscribers:
— “Greatest Scientific Invention?” from Jan. 8 —
This fun article nearly swept the awards. It really got people talking about innovations that have provided long-lasting benefits to humans. There’s no definitive right answer, which made it fascinating to read everyone’s ideas and why they chose what they did.
Most Likes:
— “Hakas, TradCaths & Levels of Meaning” from Feb. 19 —
More people liked my anti-“hot take” than anything else I wrote. I’m not sure what it all means!
Hakas, TradCaths & Levels of Meaning
A ‘Factory Tour’ of My Mind After a Viral News Event This Weekend
I also appeared as a guest on an episode of some other talented folks’ podcast and cited the conversation in one, two, three articles.
As I opined in the final Sunday Buffet of the quarter, lots of artists/creators are introverts. But preferring to work alone isn’t the same as being isolated from the world.
Yes, I like doing my Substack projects by myself. But I realize that my content — and me as a person! — would suffer if I didn’t have robust interactions with other people elsewhere in my life. Getting to talk to other creators on their shows is one such type of good social connection. It’s both uplifting for me and always provides my integrator’s mind with ideas for articles.
I hope to do more visiting on other folks’ shows in the future. Finding “someone who cares” is a quest for every quarter!
Here’s the Comments …
You know I’m always “someone who cares” about readers sharing their thoughts on the themes each week!
Ever use a payphone? Got any good payphone stories? Did you know there’s a documentary about a mysterious payphone out in the Mojave Desert?
Know any other songs with “quarter” in the title? (maybe I can get another one stuck in my mind, heh.)
Do you prefer written posts or audio/video posts? I like both forms of media, which is why I thought it a good idea to offer something in each format.
Anything else on your mind as the quarter flips?
Let me know below …
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Want some extra spiritual reading for Lent? I suggest the book, Good Neighbor, Bad Citizen, available at:
Amazon (paperback & Kindle)
Barnes&Noble (paperback)
Lulu (paperback)
Find me on X: GoodNeighBadCit
And, as always: Be a good neighbor, even if it makes you a bad citizen.