(includes some cross-posting from Patreon)
Good news!
They reinstated my Patreon account.
I am grateful to note that “deactivation” apparently doesn’t mean “all data is lost”, so that’s fantastic.
But after this rather intense scare, I have been thinking about where to go next.
It’s complicated by having to hash out how I want to exist on the internet.
I used to be Extremely Online via Twitter, and I miss those days to a certain extent, but I don’t have the energy to do that anymore.
Or the heart.
There are entire days now when I don’t talk to anyone, online or off, because I don’t have the energy to and it’s dispiriting (if eminently reasonable) to lose friends because I’m essentially a ghost.
I need the income (at the lower fee tier) and I need things to be as frictionless as possible for a while, because it’s getting to “thinking gives me migraines, lolsob”, so I’m keeping the Patreon account.
But I’m going to open a new newsletter (I know, I know) and possibly post more here, and see where that goes.
Part of why I kept running into walls with the blog and newsletter was because I was trying too hard to compartmentalize things.
Because it felt weird to talk about interior design thoughts, or tarot, or astrology, or my experiments with minimalism, or the recipes I’ve been struggling with, when I was supposed to be “building a brand”.
Perhaps it’s also some leftover weirdness from The Great Grilled Cheese Misogyny from more than a decade go, but I kept thinking “but who wants to read about how I’m trying to nail down the perfect recipe for a carrot cake recipe that makes four muffin sized mini-cakes”.
But now that I’m not on Xitter anymore, and not really on Bluesky a lot, or anywhere else…
I figure if I don’t do something, my social interactions are going to keep shrinking, and that’s just far more worrisome than “is someone gonna yell at me because I’m eating a cake, and enjoying it, while Israel is bombing Gaza”.
I am also going to have to figure out what I cross post between Patreon, the newsletter, and here.
Right now, tentatively, I think I’ll keep Patreon for where the fiction goes, and the housekeeping aspects of the book stuff. Everything else might start out in the newsletter, then make it over here.
If the newsletter hits more than 100 subscribers, or I take it to the paid subscription option, I might paywall the entries involving finances.
It’s a mess where I sometimes feel like it’s hard to talk about the situation (the intersections of chronic illness, disability, living in my parents’ house, familial relationships and past traumas) without going into detail, but I am very afraid of inviting rando abuse if I just put it out there. So a paywall might help weed out drive-by insults and unasked for advice, but who knows.
One thing I’m thinking of adding to the blog and just the blog, is reviews of restaurants and prepared food items.
I figure it’s one way of grounding myself here, as well as providing a reference for future-me so I have less conversations with my brother that go:
Kev: what do you want to eat?
Me: Uh, do you remember that breakfast place that we thought was good?
Kev: nope!
…
Kev: so how about Y?
Me: I …seem to remember the sandwiches weren’t very good?
Kev: then Z?
Me: …the dan bing was pretty bad, iirc.
Kev: so…?
With limited funds and energy, accidentally ordering delivery from a place not to our tastes tends to be a tragic affair that ruins entire days, particularly since we don’t tend to splurge unless it was already a difficult day…
Anyway! That’s where thoughts and things are at right now.
Sign up for the newsletter here!
https://buttondown.email/katjr