Low hanging fruit

it's more of a curtain than a paywall

I feel like I’d like some privacy.

I’ve been a blogger since 2008. To get to my page you had to know me or follow me on social media or be recommended somehow. It was wide open and unpaid to read but I wasn’t in the community pool swimming with everyone else. I was of course, because it was Blogger but it felt like a safer space. Like my own. I wrote more, I wrote freer. I didn’t get a break down of how many people statistically opened my email or whatever data I get from Substack all the time. I HATE IT. Also my Blogger didn’t email me to suggest I post more and how to make money on the app. I HATE THAT TOO.

In the 1990s I used to write for magazines and newspapers and I got pretty excited for a byline. I used my middle initial even to sound fancy or serious. Now I use a pseudonym. I’d like an imprint if I’m honest. Like Prince. My editor at Travel & Leisure used to noodle me with deadlines and red line “ideas” that made the work for hire suck a little. But it was for THEIR magazine and I remember getting paid $1500 per article back in the day. Actually paid for my Park Slope apartment and I could slog to my copywriting job in Manhattan and be bored at Proctor and Gamble brand meetings. I wrote the little messages inside Dove chocolates. At 27 of course, I felt that I was destined for much greater things than foil wrappers, but now I’d think, whoa! health insurance? With dental!? And I have an office with a view? and Friday they bring in lunch? Careers are for the old heads. Young people should be out traveling, dancing, fucking, drinking. When your hormones wane and you have less interest in climbing Everest, or even a flight of stairs? Office job. Live while you can still handle your alcohol.

I think most writers have that Name In Lights moment. I no longer care, 30 years later. I want you to be moved to tears or joy or thought when you read my stuff and I don’t much care if you know what my name is. I don’t really want a book signing tour, an advance or a meet and greet. I would like to get paid however. In my experience, people who want to meet The Chef or the Writer are weird and I’m not interested. Buy the steak, buy the book, pay your bill and give a nod when I pass by. We’re done, I have to go home and feed the dogs.

I’m sort of torn between being bummed that no one will read my work and being disappointed that the people who do read me don’t like or understand me. Yea, I rescue dogs in Mexico, but I’m not always going to write about that. Or do that. And there was a lot of me before that. Welcome to the tortured mind of an artist. I could easily paint a huge canvas and not give a hill of beans if someone liked it because, “Oh, I was just playing around, I don’t know what I’m doing, it’s a hobby…” But writing I’ve been doing (and encouraged along the way) since high school. It’s not a hobby, but I’m treating as thus. I need to have an outlet and a ‘column’ is my thing. If I don’t let it flow I feel creatively constipated. And here we are. Substack with a side of prune juice.

I’m not broadly embraced, it wasn’t that way when I had a restaurant either. The people who liked us, REALLY liked us. No kids, no phones, dim lights, cool tunes, expensive boutique wines and farm to table when only Alice Waters knew what that meant. Pricey and personal service. I’m not a fast casual gal. I know I’m not for everybody so do I need to be on some big gross platform like Substack? Soon to be the Facebook for writers, everyone screaming into the void like a bunch of angry Boomers in a travel group. Or dear God, Next Door.

I feel like everyone on Substack is a writer on Substack, good bad and otherwise. Margaret Atwood? Elizabeth Gilbert? They need to be on Substack? And have a Netflix series and a film with Julia Roberts starring you from your insanely popular bestseller? Yea, okay. And then weed through all the mommy bloggers and retired rich people living in Santa Barbara writing about the good ol days of real estate. Yawn.

I feel like it’s leaning Political and Corporate like everything else and I’m uninspired. I already have a voice. I don’t want it watered down on a platform that I don’t even use that is frankly, rather ugly. I suppose I could just use it like all my other social media as a tool to market my “brand” whatever that is. But I don’t want to market anything. I want to tell stories.

Like this week, there was a Bobcat in my living room. Of course the dogs caught it and …