Welcome, friend. I am glad you are here.
I’m Evan Gillissie. I grew up in Cranston, Rhode Island, and I’ve spent nearly the last fifteen years of my life in Washington, D.C. I came here for college and a love for politics and stayed for the community and life I have built.
I studied political science at Catholic University, but got into the work of campaigning much earlier — my first was in 2009 at the age of 15. I’ve worked more races than I care to count, including a life-altering experience where I managed a gubernatorial race in 2022. I spent stretches inside the federal government — OMB, the CFPB, time on the Hill — before moving into advocacy and, ultimately, technology policy — where I work today as an in-house lobbyist. None of that work was neutral. I believe things, I’ve believed them for a long time, and I’ve spent my career trying to serve those beliefs to the best of my ability.
What took me longer — years longer — was understanding how what I believe is meant to sit alongside everyone else’s, and what I’m supposed to do with that. That’s the real project. The campaigns and the titles were where I went looking for the answer; they were never the answer themselves.
I’m a student of Stoicism. It’s the discipline that finally gave me a way to hold all of it at once — the conviction and the doubt.
I’ll be honest about where that’s left me: fairly isolated, politically, and most of it traces back to what our discourse has become. I don’t recognize much of how we talk to each other now, and I’ve stopped pretending I do. But I’m not cynical and I’m not finished. I believe it takes all types to make the world go ‘round — and I’m here to play my part, as clearly and as honestly as I can manage.
This is where I do that part out loud. I write here independently — often by hand at first and later transcribed, and it's entirely mine. It's reader-supported, which is, frankly, an uncomfortable dynamic for me: I don't want the numbers to become the point. Whatever they say, my only goal is to stay proud of what I write. An offering, not a pitch — and if it's worth something to you, that's what a subscription is for.
What a Subscription Unlocks.
A subscription gets you every subscriber-only essay as it's written, the full archive, the comment threads where the real conversation happens, and a standing seat at the monthly live discussions, where we think it through out loud together, on whatever the month puts in front of us.
Founding Members.
In addition to the access from a subscription, Founding Members, if they choose, may play a role that matters a lot to me: a real hand in the thing itself. You’ll read new collections before they’re public, while they’re still close enough to change. You’ll have genuine input on where the work goes — what I take on next, which lines are worth a whole essay — and a standing, open invitation to bring it to me directly, in conversation, not through a contact form. Founding members are the people underwriting, both intellectually and financially, the independence this whole page is built on; in return you get the closest seat to how the work is made, and a say in what it becomes.
Through June, anyone who joins as a founding member also receives a physical copy of EYESEE in the mail, with a note from me.
What to Expect from Evan.
Here's what to look forward to. Stoicism is the lens, not the subject — I'm not running a Marcus Aurelius seminar. I use it to look hard at what's actually in front of me: politics and the way we've started arguing, the work I do and the world it happens in, the plain effort of trying to live well without flinching from it. Some of it will be personal, some of it will be philosophy-adjacent, and some may be thought pieces. The throughline isn't a topic; it's the attempt to remain present in every moment, on the page, in real time — and to keep at it whether or not I have the solution.
