that's what I want
I've been thinking a lot about money lately. It's the holidays; it's sale season; it's end-of-the-year accounting season. I'll do my annual update on what I wrote and what I made and what I think it means in a few weeks (here's a preview), and in the run up to that, I've been thinking about this Tinyletter and whether it might be worth trying to monetize.
It's a thought I've had periodically in the two and a half years (!) since I started sending it. Other people send paid subscription-only newsletters-- why don't I? It's one of the questions I was trying to answer when I wrote this piece for LitHub about the joy and freedom to be found in unpaid writing. I still believe in the ethos I expressed there, but then sometimes I look at the sidebar where my Tinyletter subscriber count is listed, and I think: if each of you gave me a dollar every month, I could just about pay my rent for a year.
But then I can't bring myself to pull the trigger. I like making money, but I can't quite bring myself to fully monetize: turn this thing I've done for fun, just because I want to, into a job like everything else. "Do what you love and you'll spend the rest of your life wildly confused about the boundaries between labor and pleasure;" isn't that how the saying goes? Freelancing has made me much more comfortable pitching and negotiating for my work, but it's also taught me to recognize that there are parts of my writing I don't want to treat like work-- or not like a job, which, I think, is different. This Tinyletter is the rare thing I do not want to sell, in part because keeping it unpaid reminds me that not everything needs to be for sale to be of value.
So we're staying on Tinyletter for now, friends, though it may be that eventually I'll switch over to Substack. In the mean time, please consider sending me $12. If every one of you does it, my 2019 rent will be paid, and if only a few of you do it, I'll have a little more money and peace of mind than I did before. Either way, I will keep sending you letters and links, just because I want to, and it's good to remember that sometimes that is reason enough.
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I've also been thinking about money in a larger, more like, systemic-economic sense while prepping to interview Jane Marie about her podcast The Dream, which examines the long, incredibly strange and corrupt past and present of multi-level marketing companies. It's the most engrossing, maddening, fascinating podcast I've heard since Slow Burn's first season-- highly recommend giving it a listen, whether or not there are MLM salespeople in your lives.
I also returned to my ag nerd roots and wrote about a book called A Matter of Taste for Modern Farmer, and about how farmers' wariness about integrating modern technology into their practices isn't always rooted in an anti-science or progress bias per se. It's a little wonky, maybe, but worth reading if you are a person who has opinions about the food system.
And finally, If you'd like to see me in person, I'm doing two (2) Jewish events in LA in the next few days: I'll be reading at Pop-Up Shul this Saturday, and then arguing my face off at Master Debater on Monday. (The event copy calls us "unholy minds," which I want in all of my bios from now on.) Come say a prayer and eat a latke! Tis the season, right?