Little Baby Milestone Party!
In which I hit twenty-five subscribers!
Editor’s Note: I accidentally sent this out with a large swath that was an early draft. It was full of typos. It was ungraceful, but if you’ve already read it, you probably got the gist. I was working from two machines and didn’t catch the failed sync until it went out. Rookie mistake. My bad! I HAVE ADHD. IT IS VERY FITTING. I’ve fixed the version of record here, but decided not to create a new post and flood your inboxes with a correction email.
Hey!
Guess what?
I have twenty-five subscribers!
I think that’s remarkable.
Especially considering that I do not have twenty-five friends!
In fact, if I comb through my subscriber list, I can only make a case for nine of you subscribing out of a sense of loved-one-based duty or acquaintanceship-based curiosity!
That suggests that more than fifteen of you (sixteen of you) subscribe simply because you like my writing!
Wow!
As such, I have decided to turn on “pledges”
Somewhere along the way, I told myself that twenty-five subscribers would indicate enough mutual interest between writer and readers to turn on pledges for If This Is an Emergency. So, I‘ve done just that. Pledging is essentially pre-subscribing. If you click the pledge button, you’ll essentially be signing up for a paid subscription in some bright future where I decide to go to a subscription model.
Will I be turning on paid subscriptions… soonish?
Another somewhere along the way, I told myself that fifty subscribers would indicate enough mutual interest between writer and readers to turn on subscriptions for If This Is an Emergency. So, you know. Maybe?
But don’t you have, like, a steady office job?
Yeah, but fuck that.
Seriously?
Seriously.
Come on, man.
Okay, look. I have a nine-to-five office job that I’m very grateful for. It could be worse. I’m good at it. And I like my colleagues. And for the most part I’m proud of the work that I do. But I really, really, wish I didn’t have to do it. It’s so exhausting. I hate it.
At times in my life, feeling stuck in my work, friends and family have tried to help.
“Well,” they would say, “if you could do anything you wanted to do, what would that be? You just need to figure out what that is and go for it!”
To which I would say, “I know what it is! It’s art and stuff! But I can’t leave a steady nine-to-five for art and stuff! I have a family!”
To which they would say, “No, you’re right, be a grown up. Just find a way to also do your art and stuff.”
Tough, but…
What this book presupposes is
Maybe I can keep my job but also just see where this blog thing goes?
After-work Passion Project → After-work Side Hustle → New Career
Why not?
Other dingdongs have done it, haven’t they?
Will you help me get there? Help a dingdong do art and stuff? Help a dingdong with a dream?
I’m listening. But if you do go to a subscription model, what would I even be subscribing to?
Essentially, this? I suppose I don’t know yet. I’ve been reading a lot about how to make the most of a subscription model. Do I put some of the best and most popular things behind a paywall? Do I leave the best and most popular things out there for free and then put little fun things behind a paywall? I have no idea! All of that is TBD, and it depends on me getting to fifty subscribers (because that’s the magical number that appeared in my mind and I’m sticking to it).
I can say this: If I do decide to go to a subscription model, I can commit to posting twice a week. I’ve tried out different styles of posts. I’ve tried different genres and different subjects. I have a tendency to go dormant for a few weeks and then release a flood of material all at once. Moving to a subscription model, I can commit to a steadier release schedule.
Granted, I intend to continue to try new things forever. Kanban never gets out of your brain once it gets in there. However, thinking back over these first few months of experimentation, there are a few categories of posts I am sure will recur in the medium term:
Autism Feelings Essays - These essays are core to the If This Is an Emergency project. By the numbers, they are the essays that my subscribers most connect with, and so theoretically they are the reason many of you are here. Sometimes I need to take little breaks from this topic because it can be emotionally draining to dive into, but I still feel like I have a lot to work through in writing in regard to autism. I can commit to pushing forward with this series. In fact, I’ve got a new essay queued up. Stay tuned.
Open-topic Personal Essays - “A Statue of Don Quixote on a Piano That Cannot Be Played” is one of the best things I’ve ever written. I don’t hesitate to say that. I believe it. I’m very proud of it. But this was surprising to me. This essay came out of nowhere and came together like magic. The writing process itself was sorrowful and joyful and healing. Releasing it out into the world was cosmic. Coming into this project, I thought of myself as a fiction writer. I thought of myself as a musician. But “Personal Essayist” had not been etched into my resume lobe. To you all, to you readers: It’s really meant a lot to me to have gotten such warm feedback for the Don Quixote essay. And, statistically, it’s one of the most successful posts I’ve had. I can commit to exploring these kinds of personal essays as they come to me.
Songwriting Feelings Essays - This was a weird one! It taught me that I could never be on TikTok, and it made me deeply uncomfortable for a little while. The post itself had middling engagement and just sort of sat there, out in the world, making me wonder if anyone actually listened to the song as they skimmed through the essay. If so, did anyone like it? Did I just humiliate myself for no good reason? Total. Emotional. Void. So vulnerable! Strangely, foolishly perhaps, I really want to keep going with this. When I start to feel that urge to share a song, I want to roll it out here on If This Is an Emergency. When I do, my goal is to have the essay that showcases it do the work, not the song. I want to get the songs out into the world, but what really interests me as a writer (and what I hope will be interesting to readers) is working through and around the personal discomfort I have with being a prolific songwriter who never performs and hoards his songs.
Short Stories - This is a real heartbreaker for me. I’m so very proud of “Artist in Residence at Fisher-Price” and other short stories I’ve written. I only have a small sample set to go by, but it seems my short stories are just fundamentally less popular than my essays. Measurably fewer people will even open the email if “Short Story” is in the header. What can I do? I feel in my heart like Paul Zaic, Fiction Writer is me at my very best, so it’s been hard to confront the numbers. Still, I’ll likely publish some of my fiction here in the future. Masochistically, I’ll continue to pursue the lit-mag route to find my stories homes, but sometimes stories comment on a moment in time. Sometimes they just need to be out there where people can see them.
Poems - By the numbers, my poems are deeply, deeply unpopular! Christ, you guys! But I can’t help myself. Sometimes I’m going to drop a sonnet down the well. I hope you see them as they fly by. I hope their wake musses your hair.
And on that note? If… I…
Thank you, subscribers! As stated above:
More than fifteen of you (sixteen of you) subscribe simply because you like my writing!
And that’s really something!