freshly squeezed is soon to have a new home, here's why
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Hello—
For the most part, fall of 2024 was all about making pottery for a studio tour I did in collaboration with my mom. Aside from that, I went for walks with wads of toilet paper in my pocket because I never have enough tissues for my ever-running nose, ate pies and soups and breads and sweets with loved ones, stressed about many things outside of my control, and read whatever book became available at the library that week.
We also adopted a little black cat and named her Ochi (pronounced ‘Ohh-Chee’). She likes to watch birds and attack our feet and sleep on our laps and look at us like it would be easy for her to crawl inside our bodies and burrow into our souls.
As for the rest, well, this whole newsletter-platform-switch is something I’ve been thinking about but haven’t known how to talk about because things were busy and I was distracted and I knew that I would have to wait until I had found freshly squeezed a new home before I’d want to pick this newsletter back up again.
And now that I have, here are the details…
As a free or paid subscriber to this newsletter, the purpose of this email is to make you aware of freshly squeezed’s switch from Substack to Buttondown, while passing along any information that might be helpful for you to know.
If curious, the article I’m referencing lives here.
When I first signed up for Substack, it felt like the best thing that could have ever happened to anyone looking to share their writing and their art online, while building a community and generating a monthly income.
And while it continues to make me very happy to see Substack be all of those things for so many people, it stopped feeling that way for me sometime last year. So, in the months that followed, I kept my eyes and ears peeled for somewhere else—somewhere simple and straightforward.
Somewhere without distractions. Somewhere I could write and edit and hit send and then close my computer, not worrying about likes and comments and follows. And then maybe after writing, I would have a quiet lunch and read someone else’s newsletter, occasionally looking out the window at the sun and the birds and thinking about how much my nose would run if I went for a walk, then maybe going for a walk.
Sometime in the coming weeks, you’ll no longer be able to find freshly squeezed on Substack, and shortly after that, you’ll receive an email from freshly squeezed that will probably look a little different but will be mostly the same. Essentially, you will be transferred (manually, by me) from my Substack mailing list, to my Buttondown mailing list—which is where, moving forward, I’ll be sending my newsletters from.
For those of you who ‘follow’ freshly squeezed on Substack, to continue receiving this newsletter, please ‘subscribe’ to freshly squeezed (alternatively, if you’d rather not subscribe right now, you can always visit this page of my website later).
For those who are free subscribers to freshly squeezed, there is nothing you have to do in order to stay subscribed to this newsletter.
For those who are paid subscribers to freshly squeezed, there is also nothing you have to do in order to continue as a paid subscribed to this newsletter, let me explain why…
Substack’s payments are set up through Stripe, a commonly used payment processing system. And because Buttondown also uses Stripe, I’ll be able to switch those payments from my Substack’s Stripe account to my Buttondown’s Stripe account, without having to ask you to re-enter your payment information.
Two important things worth noting
01. I will not have access to anyone’s payment details throughout this process or ever, only the ability to switch paid subscribers from my Substack’s Stripe account (where you currently are) to my new Buttondown’s Stripe account (where everything is soon to be).
02. And if you are actively a monthly subscriber, the amount you pay and the day that amount is taken out of your bank account will remain the same, and if you are an annual or founding subscriber, you are charged once a year, and that date and amount will also not change (unless, of course, you choose to cancel your monthly, annual, or founding subscription).
And in the next newsletter I send you (via Buttondown), I will highlight where you can access your new freshly squeezed account/subscription details. If you are a free subscriber, this is where you’ll go to upgrade or unsubscribe, and if you are a paid subscriber, this is where you’ll go to make changes to your account.
I will also have an archive of all of the newsletters I’ve sent here on Substack. Though this is more for my own personal record, I do like the idea of making them available for you, too. There will also be an on-going archive of newsletters sent from Buttondown.
And to continue to keep things tidy, all of my newsletter information (subscription options, faqs, schedule, helpful links, an archive) will always be available to you here, on my website.
While this newsletter will no longer live on Substack, I will be keeping my Substack profile active so I can continue to engage with the newsletters I am currently subscribed to. That and there’s , an audio project I’m very excited to be doing with my good friend, at some point this year.
Moving forward, I’ll have two mailing lists. One for website updates and one for my personal writing on freshly squeezed. To me, this feels accessible, an approach that my often anxious brain can make sense of—the overall goal being to find spaces and platforms that compliment and support me as a creative person who is also many other things.
And so, sometime in the coming weeks, I’ll send you a more personal email with other helpful notes on Buttondown. In the meantime, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns, I so appreciate your patience—my hope is for a quick and seamless transition.
Anyways!
Talk soon,
Chloe
PS. Thank you for being here, especially through this transitional period. It means so much to me that you enjoy the things I write and the way I write and when I write (which is often not very often). I appreciate it more than I could say in this tiny post script. I’m really quite excited to write and share from somewhere that is seemingly a better match to my squiggly-brained ways.
On accessing your paid subscriptions…
01. With a buttondown account, you’ll be able to access your Freshly Squeezed account at any time (just make sure that the email you use to make the account or login with, is the same as the one you used to subscribe to this newsletter)
Once logged in, go to the ‘subscriptions’ section in your menu, and select the subscription you’d like to make changes to
02. If you paid for an annual or founding recurring subscription while Freshly Squeezed was hosted on Substack, it will remain available to you for as long as you’d like to keep it active
If you would like to change or cancel it, please login to your Buttondown account to do so
*All newsletter FAQ’s can be found here