"Is the canceling of every social media account, or every long overdue email response (not to mention the unreturned ones), or denied request for coffee or beer or whatever a metaphorical severing of one of my own digits until none remain?"
I'm not going to be watching this movie (I just can't anymore; there's too much sorrow every day as it is), but it feels like ... no? Though it's hard to say without seeing the full context. Deleting all my social media definitely affected my work, how it reaches people (or doesn't), how I can talk about it, who gives it attention. I knew that going in, though I didn't know how *much* it would affect all of that (a lot more than I realized). Even if I had, though, I don't regret it a bit. Not having that reach doesn't affect my ability to write, while interacting with social media in any way affected, for the worse, *everything* about my life including writing. I have to rely more on friends and connections spreading my work, and on my own voice, which maybe isn't a bad thing even if it doesn't go as far. No matter what, though, it's worth it to feel like I'm alive rather than half-dead, curating a self for an algorithm. In either case, I'll be dead and forgotten someday. I'd rather live life while it has me.
Everyone's relationship to these things is different, as you point out.
Plenty of other choices affect these things, too, though. Even choosing to live away from any real writer community makes a big difference in opportunity. But there are so many things that I do with my time that I wouldn't if I had more of those opportunities. I don't know that it's the worst thing in the world to be forced to ask what makes us feel alive, even if we don't have an opportunity to do it as fully as Haines did.
Teachers appreciate the guests who visit our classrooms, the new perspective our students get to have as a result, and the wisdom of poets. Thank you for doing that work of love.
Mar 23, 2023·edited Mar 23, 2023Liked by Chris La Tray
I understand - I am finding it hard to read the Sweetness of Water, which is beautifully written, after work given how sad it is... this is not normal for me. I typically find the honesty of others, including their honesty about grief, to be validating and reassuring. I think we are in a time of great grief and loss and so our capacity to handle deep sadness, our bandwidth, is stretched thin.
I think given that St Pattys Day just occurred, it was awesome to watch this film. Thank you for honoring Irish culture despite our sadness! I really enjoyed this song during this important holiday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKTSpOZMZQI
I think it's hard to measure our impact on people, particularly children, but I know that your impact on them has been greater than you can observe - thank you for what you do. And, thank you for these postings which help me because I find them validating and reassuring as well.
I’ve been teaching 5th grade for 12 years now. I love it, but this year has been HARD. I am losing one colleague for whom this was his 2nd year. The way things are in schools and the fact that everyone thought because he was Navajo he could relate to ALL minority students along with micro aggressions have chased him out. My daughter teaches 6-8 special education I. Washington, and she has observed that this has been the worst year following the pandemic. The same student has thrown her into a wall 2 times and they are talking about letting him back in her class. Social skills are often weak or non-existent. I spend a large portion of every day maintaining orderly transitions and quiet in class. I am exhausted. But it is the work I chose and I don’t see anything I’d rather do. We have all had enough, I think. My daughter and I hope that things will improve in a few years as distance grows between the present and Covid. Fingers crossed.
The way that we've allowed school to become for children breaks my heart--and yet its heartening to know there are so many people--like you--who are teaching them and spending time with kids to make that experience positive. It's funny--I was reluctant to watch that film and then found I really enjoyed it, despite the sorrow--I don't usually have any capacity for sad movie fests any longer, especially the older I get. But something about both sides being bonkers, trying to figure out what is important, what isn't...and then finding that their striving is not about them and affects others. I'm not saying it eloquently but there was something that I found almost reassuring--that sometimes all the things we do to work ourselves up creates our own problems for ourselves as well as others. The idea of creating something immortal, the protestant ethic of productivity, etc. Maybe we need to just let ourselves be.
But I didn't want to turn the comments into a movie review! And I have so much respect for how it affected you--I see that too and I think if it was another day I would have had a hard time watching it. Saving Time is really good--I'm halfway through and it's saying things I know and feel but the context and throughlines in history she parses out is right on. Also--Haines. 💜 The land and the disregard we have for our relationship with it is so missing from most of our lives. Have you read David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous? I just read it and it gives so much to think about, kind of similarly parsing out the throughlines of why we've abandoned our bodies and the land and all of the earth and the consequences of that--not in a defeatest way, but in a liberating way.
Just jumping in here to say thank you for this reminder that the struggle to live less of a derivative life is a worthy one even if it's not popular, rewarded, or simple. This constant tension between our attention and participation in society feels so central to our terrestrial life as humans (esp. nowadays) and it takes a toll. I don't think we acknowledge that enough. Thanks for this one, Chris. 🙏
I didn't know Banshees was a black comedy when I started watching it and I really wish I had because I wouldn't have started. The thing about black comedy is that it's all quite funny for the first half and then BANG. WHAM. TRAUMA! GORE! EXCESSIVE VIOLENCE!
My nervous system can't take it. I abandoned the film as soon as it was clear more appendages were going to be cut off. Alas, it's still living in my brain in the worst, most intrusive way. I am with you. I don't think something needs to be THAT in your face, unless you suspect the audience to be totally numbed out. As a queer person in the world, I don't need any cinematic reminders of the worst things human beings are capable of. :P
"'We live off the surface of things and places, the culture as well as the land; ours is a derivative life: we take what we find without thought, without regard for origin or consequences, unaware for the most part that the resources, both natural and cultural, are fast diminishing.'"
Yeah we do. The most powerful forces (people? industries? ideologies? it's all tangled up) among us seem to be reacting to the obvious disaster we have created by extracting more, producing more, consuming more. What I see, among a thousand other things, is a frenetic wish to fend off mortality that, ironically, is only hastening massive die-offs. We are already presiding over one of the largest extinction events in the planet's history; the logic of ramping up the destruction escapes me.
Which is why I read you. :)
The first time I met wild buffalo was in Yellowstone. We drove a Dodge Caravan (for hauling band gear to gigs but it was also good for road trips); we stopped at the side of the road as a small group were crossing it, and of course they were in no hurry. One huge animal just stood by the side of the car; we quietly rolled the windows down just enough to see and hear and smell. It was taller than our minivan and nothing at all was stopping it from, I don't know, deciding to lean? Or rub off some of its molting summer coat?
But it didn't do anything but stand for several minutes, before slowly taking off. I cannot say what it was like to sit right next to it except: solidity, quiet, patience, the vastness of time. Not entirely unlike waiting under a cedar or sequoia--if the tree were to somehow breathe out loud.
The time listed for the Zoom invite says 7 MST. Do you all not do daylight time? Or was the invite made before the time change? Not that I am booked up on Sunday; I have plenty of time to log in early to see if it's started yet.
Also trying so damn hard to get beneath the “surface of things” - especially helping my kids to feel their place, to feel a deep connection to our corner of the world. I’m really enjoying your newsletter.
I'm trying to grow roots in my little corner of the world, literally and figuratively. ❤️ Looking forward to spring to see the native plants I planted the last two years in our suburban yard come back stronger than ever and to plant more. I had one meadow blazing star plant last year and there was a time when it had three monarch butterflies at once on it, so getting more of those this year.
I’m so sorry. A lot of people in our district came into this year talking about what a relief it was to be back to something like normal. But so many issues have been off the charts.
Aww thank you, friend! I definitely have Haines on my list now.
I was talking to a high school teacher in San Francisco yesterday, and he said all his kids were about two years behind; the classroom really needed to be set up as though it were for middle schoolers. My heart truly breaks for all students and educators right now.
Someone at my son's high school said a similar thing yesterday, that after two years of remote schooling where he'd previously worked in Seattle, a lot of the kids just didn't know how to interact socially anymore. The academic thing bugs me because the benchmarks are so arbitrary anyway, especially for younger grades, though the discrepancies are hard because some kids had plenty of access and support, while plenty of others didn't.
But there are also so many pressures? I keep wondering why nobody seems to write about the immense social and political pressures of the times and how they might be affecting kids, too. Like all the violence and anti-mask protests and an attempted insurrection, all during a global pandemic, while climate change ramps up and suddenly elected officials are banning books ... the kids know what's going on. And they know that nobody in charge is actually doing anything about it. I can't believe that all of it doesn't have an effect, too.
Katrin, Nia, Jean ... I hear this a lot and often wonder: behind WHAT? Standards seem to be the root of the problem, teaching to tests, bizarre capitalist-based expectations of what we are "preparing" kids for. Maybe this is the time to tear it all down and just start over.
My 7th grader was learning about the moon and tides yesterday and near tears because they just couldn’t wrap their head around such an abstract idea - we don’t even live near the ocean!!! Why?!? I’d rather they learn about marshes and wetlands or freshwater lakes and why they lose oxygen and how we can care for them instead of these bogus, standards-based “units” for state tests. Ughhh.
There are a lot of ways to explain it. One of the reasons is that not having standards across states made it really hard on kids who move (agricultural workers were brought up a lot during Common Core debates, if I remember), which I can see, having been someone who moved a lot and always found myself repeating the same lessons or way out of my depth. Not that the standards have fixed that problem, it was just an intention.
But “capitalism” covers a lot. Making things measurable and open to being commodified (the required tests come from for-profit companies). In some states it’s also been a tool wielded against teachers’ unions. The fact that teachers are able to truly teach and inspire kids despite all that is a miracle.
If anyone truly cared about education, much less equity, they’d just fund schools and teachers to the moon and back!
Having science always be rooted in local ecology would be *incredible.*
My brother the retired high school math teacher would agree with you, even though he makes an astonishing amount of money tutoring kids for the SAT and ACT. (Granted, Miami money, but still.)
Well, I work in textbook publishing, so get me started on this bullshit and I might never stop. The standards are arbitrary. Learn long division now, in six months, or next year, it should not matter at all. Seriously, you do not want me to go off about this. It makes me so mad.
It’s implemented in a way to guarantee the opposite. (I’ve been in this for over 20 years! I was fully immersed in Common Core rollout. Plenty of fuel for my rage about all of it. 🔥🫠)
Thank you - lovely post. I'm so surprised extra people unsubscribed after your post about where your money comes from - I'd have expected the opposite. Folk, eh?
I identified a part of me last week that is my Inner Capitalist (I wrote about it here https://satyarobyn.substack.com/p/meet-eddie-my-inner-capitalist) and he is so interested in these things - how do people react to being asked to value work and hand over money? It involves so many things - trust, their personal values & triggers etc. I also, like you, know that it's impossible to work it out and trust that the most important thing is to keep doing the work in an authentic way, enjoying it as much as I can, and trusting that the Universe will support me somehow (which it does). Still, I don't like it that they unsubscribed from you!!
I think there are a lot of reasons people unsubscribe. First, I think there are a fair number of bots subscribing; just looking at some of the emails that show up is pretty decent proof of that. I think there are scammers out there – I'm getting more and more spam from people who subscribe, then email me directly trying to get me to try their method for getting MORE subscribers, etc.
Then there are people who I think subscribe inadvertently. Substack itself causes this, where you subscribe to someone and Substack suggests you might like these other ones, and if you don't click the correct button all of a sudden you're subscribed to newsletters you've never seen and aren't interested in.
Finally, people lose interest. Or they move their subscription/support money around. Or the card they originally subscribed with a year ago was compromised and they are sick of fixing it everywhere it was used. There are plenty of reasons and I don't let it bother me too much. Even with people bailing, the upward trend here continues to rise, if more slowly (which is to be expected) and I hope my gratitude for that is understood by readers.
Yes agreed. Definitely not worth getting worried about it. It was the 'why particularly after that post' that I was curious about - maybe people were, 'oh he's already got plenty of money coming from Substack', or the responsibility of supporting you was scary... Or it could've just been a coincidence! I think it was a great post anyway. Garrett from The White Pages did a great 'transparency' document about where his money comes from /goes, but I can't find it now... This post is on a similar topic https://thewhitepages.substack.com/p/it's-all-so-weird. It's rare for folk to say how much they earn & what they spend it on - guilt I guess? But I think more of it would be a good thing!
Fire watcher in a forest service tower has always been my dream job too! My grandparents had a ranch on the Canadian border and my mom once pointed out the towers on the skyline across the valley and explained what they did, I would always watch those little boxes on the horizon and dream about the amazing summers they had up there. Hiking up to an old fire tower during the pandemic left me with the same pull - maybe waiting out the pandemic with cases of Le Croix, a pile of books and a really good sleeping bag...off to google “fire tower writer residencies” now.
"Is the canceling of every social media account, or every long overdue email response (not to mention the unreturned ones), or denied request for coffee or beer or whatever a metaphorical severing of one of my own digits until none remain?"
I'm not going to be watching this movie (I just can't anymore; there's too much sorrow every day as it is), but it feels like ... no? Though it's hard to say without seeing the full context. Deleting all my social media definitely affected my work, how it reaches people (or doesn't), how I can talk about it, who gives it attention. I knew that going in, though I didn't know how *much* it would affect all of that (a lot more than I realized). Even if I had, though, I don't regret it a bit. Not having that reach doesn't affect my ability to write, while interacting with social media in any way affected, for the worse, *everything* about my life including writing. I have to rely more on friends and connections spreading my work, and on my own voice, which maybe isn't a bad thing even if it doesn't go as far. No matter what, though, it's worth it to feel like I'm alive rather than half-dead, curating a self for an algorithm. In either case, I'll be dead and forgotten someday. I'd rather live life while it has me.
Everyone's relationship to these things is different, as you point out.
Plenty of other choices affect these things, too, though. Even choosing to live away from any real writer community makes a big difference in opportunity. But there are so many things that I do with my time that I wouldn't if I had more of those opportunities. I don't know that it's the worst thing in the world to be forced to ask what makes us feel alive, even if we don't have an opportunity to do it as fully as Haines did.
"Even choosing to live away from any real writer community makes a big difference in opportunity."
Mostly the opportunity to grind one's teeth over how annoying writers and their narcissistic communities really are. 😏
Surely all writers are idealistic and think only of the work and to how to support one another without the slightest urge to be competitive? 🫠🫠🫠
I was literally reading this comment and the power went out at my house.
Witchy. 😈
Teachers appreciate the guests who visit our classrooms, the new perspective our students get to have as a result, and the wisdom of poets. Thank you for doing that work of love.
❤️🍎❤️
I understand - I am finding it hard to read the Sweetness of Water, which is beautifully written, after work given how sad it is... this is not normal for me. I typically find the honesty of others, including their honesty about grief, to be validating and reassuring. I think we are in a time of great grief and loss and so our capacity to handle deep sadness, our bandwidth, is stretched thin.
I think given that St Pattys Day just occurred, it was awesome to watch this film. Thank you for honoring Irish culture despite our sadness! I really enjoyed this song during this important holiday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKTSpOZMZQI
I think it's hard to measure our impact on people, particularly children, but I know that your impact on them has been greater than you can observe - thank you for what you do. And, thank you for these postings which help me because I find them validating and reassuring as well.
Thank you, Dominique.
I’ve been teaching 5th grade for 12 years now. I love it, but this year has been HARD. I am losing one colleague for whom this was his 2nd year. The way things are in schools and the fact that everyone thought because he was Navajo he could relate to ALL minority students along with micro aggressions have chased him out. My daughter teaches 6-8 special education I. Washington, and she has observed that this has been the worst year following the pandemic. The same student has thrown her into a wall 2 times and they are talking about letting him back in her class. Social skills are often weak or non-existent. I spend a large portion of every day maintaining orderly transitions and quiet in class. I am exhausted. But it is the work I chose and I don’t see anything I’d rather do. We have all had enough, I think. My daughter and I hope that things will improve in a few years as distance grows between the present and Covid. Fingers crossed.
This hurts my heart, but thank you for doing what you do. 💔❤️
The way that we've allowed school to become for children breaks my heart--and yet its heartening to know there are so many people--like you--who are teaching them and spending time with kids to make that experience positive. It's funny--I was reluctant to watch that film and then found I really enjoyed it, despite the sorrow--I don't usually have any capacity for sad movie fests any longer, especially the older I get. But something about both sides being bonkers, trying to figure out what is important, what isn't...and then finding that their striving is not about them and affects others. I'm not saying it eloquently but there was something that I found almost reassuring--that sometimes all the things we do to work ourselves up creates our own problems for ourselves as well as others. The idea of creating something immortal, the protestant ethic of productivity, etc. Maybe we need to just let ourselves be.
But I didn't want to turn the comments into a movie review! And I have so much respect for how it affected you--I see that too and I think if it was another day I would have had a hard time watching it. Saving Time is really good--I'm halfway through and it's saying things I know and feel but the context and throughlines in history she parses out is right on. Also--Haines. 💜 The land and the disregard we have for our relationship with it is so missing from most of our lives. Have you read David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous? I just read it and it gives so much to think about, kind of similarly parsing out the throughlines of why we've abandoned our bodies and the land and all of the earth and the consequences of that--not in a defeatest way, but in a liberating way.
I haven't read that Abrams book yet but I have intended to for years. I just received a free download from Libro.fm ... perhaps I'll grab it next!
Just jumping in here to say thank you for this reminder that the struggle to live less of a derivative life is a worthy one even if it's not popular, rewarded, or simple. This constant tension between our attention and participation in society feels so central to our terrestrial life as humans (esp. nowadays) and it takes a toll. I don't think we acknowledge that enough. Thanks for this one, Chris. 🙏
✊🏽
I didn't know Banshees was a black comedy when I started watching it and I really wish I had because I wouldn't have started. The thing about black comedy is that it's all quite funny for the first half and then BANG. WHAM. TRAUMA! GORE! EXCESSIVE VIOLENCE!
My nervous system can't take it. I abandoned the film as soon as it was clear more appendages were going to be cut off. Alas, it's still living in my brain in the worst, most intrusive way. I am with you. I don't think something needs to be THAT in your face, unless you suspect the audience to be totally numbed out. As a queer person in the world, I don't need any cinematic reminders of the worst things human beings are capable of. :P
Frankly, the appendages were the least of my concerns by the time that bloody movie ended.
"'We live off the surface of things and places, the culture as well as the land; ours is a derivative life: we take what we find without thought, without regard for origin or consequences, unaware for the most part that the resources, both natural and cultural, are fast diminishing.'"
Yeah we do. The most powerful forces (people? industries? ideologies? it's all tangled up) among us seem to be reacting to the obvious disaster we have created by extracting more, producing more, consuming more. What I see, among a thousand other things, is a frenetic wish to fend off mortality that, ironically, is only hastening massive die-offs. We are already presiding over one of the largest extinction events in the planet's history; the logic of ramping up the destruction escapes me.
Which is why I read you. :)
The first time I met wild buffalo was in Yellowstone. We drove a Dodge Caravan (for hauling band gear to gigs but it was also good for road trips); we stopped at the side of the road as a small group were crossing it, and of course they were in no hurry. One huge animal just stood by the side of the car; we quietly rolled the windows down just enough to see and hear and smell. It was taller than our minivan and nothing at all was stopping it from, I don't know, deciding to lean? Or rub off some of its molting summer coat?
But it didn't do anything but stand for several minutes, before slowly taking off. I cannot say what it was like to sit right next to it except: solidity, quiet, patience, the vastness of time. Not entirely unlike waiting under a cedar or sequoia--if the tree were to somehow breathe out loud.
The time listed for the Zoom invite says 7 MST. Do you all not do daylight time? Or was the invite made before the time change? Not that I am booked up on Sunday; I have plenty of time to log in early to see if it's started yet.
It's at 7 everywhere in Montana on Sunday. What that means anywhere else is someone else's problem. 😏
OK. I'll look up whether MT is on daylight time or not.
We are.
Cool. Thanks.
Love your story about the Buffalo. And yes, the logic of ramping up destruction to fend off mortality boggles the mind. 💔
Also trying so damn hard to get beneath the “surface of things” - especially helping my kids to feel their place, to feel a deep connection to our corner of the world. I’m really enjoying your newsletter.
Thank you. I think the more you get outside, outside itself makes it happen. It takes time.
I'm trying to grow roots in my little corner of the world, literally and figuratively. ❤️ Looking forward to spring to see the native plants I planted the last two years in our suburban yard come back stronger than ever and to plant more. I had one meadow blazing star plant last year and there was a time when it had three monarch butterflies at once on it, so getting more of those this year.
Now THIS is something to look forward to. Keep us posted!
Thanks, Chris. The comparison about different kinds of willpower was especially helpful. I don't know how kids pay attention in a classroom anymore.
And when I say this year is hard, I taught simultaneously online and in person 2020-2021. That didn’t break me, but this might.
I’m so sorry. A lot of people in our district came into this year talking about what a relief it was to be back to something like normal. But so many issues have been off the charts.
Aww thank you, friend! I definitely have Haines on my list now.
I was talking to a high school teacher in San Francisco yesterday, and he said all his kids were about two years behind; the classroom really needed to be set up as though it were for middle schoolers. My heart truly breaks for all students and educators right now.
Also, I will be at there over Zoom! Can't wait!
Someone at my son's high school said a similar thing yesterday, that after two years of remote schooling where he'd previously worked in Seattle, a lot of the kids just didn't know how to interact socially anymore. The academic thing bugs me because the benchmarks are so arbitrary anyway, especially for younger grades, though the discrepancies are hard because some kids had plenty of access and support, while plenty of others didn't.
But there are also so many pressures? I keep wondering why nobody seems to write about the immense social and political pressures of the times and how they might be affecting kids, too. Like all the violence and anti-mask protests and an attempted insurrection, all during a global pandemic, while climate change ramps up and suddenly elected officials are banning books ... the kids know what's going on. And they know that nobody in charge is actually doing anything about it. I can't believe that all of it doesn't have an effect, too.
👏🏽👏🏽
Hearing the same from a neighbor who teaches 1st grade. She is having a heck of a time getting them to engage with her as well as with each other.
Katrin, Nia, Jean ... I hear this a lot and often wonder: behind WHAT? Standards seem to be the root of the problem, teaching to tests, bizarre capitalist-based expectations of what we are "preparing" kids for. Maybe this is the time to tear it all down and just start over.
🔥🔥🔥
My 7th grader was learning about the moon and tides yesterday and near tears because they just couldn’t wrap their head around such an abstract idea - we don’t even live near the ocean!!! Why?!? I’d rather they learn about marshes and wetlands or freshwater lakes and why they lose oxygen and how we can care for them instead of these bogus, standards-based “units” for state tests. Ughhh.
There are a lot of ways to explain it. One of the reasons is that not having standards across states made it really hard on kids who move (agricultural workers were brought up a lot during Common Core debates, if I remember), which I can see, having been someone who moved a lot and always found myself repeating the same lessons or way out of my depth. Not that the standards have fixed that problem, it was just an intention.
But “capitalism” covers a lot. Making things measurable and open to being commodified (the required tests come from for-profit companies). In some states it’s also been a tool wielded against teachers’ unions. The fact that teachers are able to truly teach and inspire kids despite all that is a miracle.
If anyone truly cared about education, much less equity, they’d just fund schools and teachers to the moon and back!
Having science always be rooted in local ecology would be *incredible.*
"Having science always be rooted in local ecology would be *incredible.*"
💯
My brother the retired high school math teacher would agree with you, even though he makes an astonishing amount of money tutoring kids for the SAT and ACT. (Granted, Miami money, but still.)
Well, I work in textbook publishing, so get me started on this bullshit and I might never stop. The standards are arbitrary. Learn long division now, in six months, or next year, it should not matter at all. Seriously, you do not want me to go off about this. It makes me so mad.
Equity, the new dirty word.
P.S. Don't go off about this - we'll both be mad. ✌️
It’s implemented in a way to guarantee the opposite. (I’ve been in this for over 20 years! I was fully immersed in Common Core rollout. Plenty of fuel for my rage about all of it. 🔥🫠)
(But you are right. That’s the stated goal.)
Thank you - lovely post. I'm so surprised extra people unsubscribed after your post about where your money comes from - I'd have expected the opposite. Folk, eh?
I'll never figure it out. 😂
I identified a part of me last week that is my Inner Capitalist (I wrote about it here https://satyarobyn.substack.com/p/meet-eddie-my-inner-capitalist) and he is so interested in these things - how do people react to being asked to value work and hand over money? It involves so many things - trust, their personal values & triggers etc. I also, like you, know that it's impossible to work it out and trust that the most important thing is to keep doing the work in an authentic way, enjoying it as much as I can, and trusting that the Universe will support me somehow (which it does). Still, I don't like it that they unsubscribed from you!!
I think there are a lot of reasons people unsubscribe. First, I think there are a fair number of bots subscribing; just looking at some of the emails that show up is pretty decent proof of that. I think there are scammers out there – I'm getting more and more spam from people who subscribe, then email me directly trying to get me to try their method for getting MORE subscribers, etc.
Then there are people who I think subscribe inadvertently. Substack itself causes this, where you subscribe to someone and Substack suggests you might like these other ones, and if you don't click the correct button all of a sudden you're subscribed to newsletters you've never seen and aren't interested in.
Finally, people lose interest. Or they move their subscription/support money around. Or the card they originally subscribed with a year ago was compromised and they are sick of fixing it everywhere it was used. There are plenty of reasons and I don't let it bother me too much. Even with people bailing, the upward trend here continues to rise, if more slowly (which is to be expected) and I hope my gratitude for that is understood by readers.
Yes agreed. Definitely not worth getting worried about it. It was the 'why particularly after that post' that I was curious about - maybe people were, 'oh he's already got plenty of money coming from Substack', or the responsibility of supporting you was scary... Or it could've just been a coincidence! I think it was a great post anyway. Garrett from The White Pages did a great 'transparency' document about where his money comes from /goes, but I can't find it now... This post is on a similar topic https://thewhitepages.substack.com/p/it's-all-so-weird. It's rare for folk to say how much they earn & what they spend it on - guilt I guess? But I think more of it would be a good thing!
Ah, Chris! Such good stuff - all of it. Thank you. 💚
💚
Fire watcher in a forest service tower has always been my dream job too! My grandparents had a ranch on the Canadian border and my mom once pointed out the towers on the skyline across the valley and explained what they did, I would always watch those little boxes on the horizon and dream about the amazing summers they had up there. Hiking up to an old fire tower during the pandemic left me with the same pull - maybe waiting out the pandemic with cases of Le Croix, a pile of books and a really good sleeping bag...off to google “fire tower writer residencies” now.
There are fire towers all over Montana you can sign up to stay in. Maybe there's something similar wherever you are?