About Jay Werther
Writer and former lawyer exploring addiction, recovery, digital reputation, and what it takes to stay human inside modern systems.
I write about the parts of life that systems tend to misunderstand or ignore. Addiction and recovery. Digital reputation. Bureaucracy. Midlife mental health. The quiet, difficult work of rebuilding a life in a world that remembers your worst moment more easily than your progress.
I have lived inside many of the systems people argue about from a distance. Law. Medicine. Courts. Administrative agencies. Online platforms and algorithms. What I’ve learned is simple. People change. Systems rarely do. And when systems fail to recognize change, real harm follows.
My writing is not a confession and not a sermon. It is an attempt to describe what it actually feels like to move forward while outdated records, rigid rules, and automated judgments keep pulling you backward. I’m interested in proportion, fairness, accountability, and the human cost of systems that refuse to update.
If you’ve ever felt frozen in time by a past mistake, misunderstood by a process that wasn’t built for real life, or quietly overwhelmed by forces that don’t see the whole person, you’re in the right place.
Background
I grew up in upstate New York. I became a lawyer. I lost that career. I went through addiction and recovery. I rebuilt. I moved across states and rebuilt again.
Along the way, I’ve dealt with chronic pain, family collapse, caregiving responsibilities, and the long shadow of online reputation fallout. I’m not interested in moral theater or perfection. I’m interested in truth, recovery, and the realities people don’t talk about until they’re forced to.
The Fair Identity Project
The Fair Identity Project is an initiative I’m building to address one central problem: how people are defined forever by outdated information in systems that do not recognize growth.
In a digital world, your name can become frozen in a past version of yourself. Search engines rarely forget. Bureaucracies rarely update. Institutions often treat change as an inconvenience.
The goal of the Fair Identity Project is simple:
to advocate for fair and proportional digital reputation practices
to push for humane systems that recognize rehabilitation and growth
to help people defend who they are now, not who they were at their worst moment
This work is still developing, but the writing here forms its foundation.
Published Work
My opinion writing has appeared in regional and statewide outlets across New York and Utah, including the Times Union, Daily Gazette, Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News, Park Record, Daily Herald, Standard-Examiner, Finger Lakes Times, and Herald Journal News.
A current list of published pieces can be found here:
Elsewhere
Main site and Substack archive
A note on older records
Like many people, traces of my name appear in old academic, professional, and public archives. Some reflect earlier chapters of my life. Others reflect the normal residue of time and institutions that never clean up after themselves.
This project exists in part to show that people are more than the snapshots systems preserve.
