Support this site

When you subscribe to this website by email you will have the option to pay a monthly sum – currently £2, £5 or £10 – or to pay nothing at all. This page has a go at explaining why I'm doing this.

The first thing to say is you don't have to support me financially in order to read my stuff. Everything I publish will be made available in full to anyone who comes to this site. I won't put anything behind a paywall or membership tier. I believe in writing for the commons, for the common good. I have personally benefitted from people sharing their knowledge and ideas without restrictions and want to be part of that tradition.

The second thing to say is I want to write more. For the last couple of decades I've mostly funded my personal creative work through other jobs, most of which I've been lucky enough to enjoy but which have corralled my attention and energies into areas that ultimately weren't where I needed to be. I have a strong feeling (nothing is provable in mental health, of course) that this has snowballed into my the autistic burnout of my 50s and I want to try something different. Clearly I'm going to need jobs, because this website is very unlikely to pay all the bills, but I think I need it to be a solid and justifiable receptacle for my obsessions.

The third thing to say is I need to put no restrictions on what I write about, nor make any solid plans. Writing for an audience is important but I can't be pre-judging what that audience wants because that leads to paralysis and misery. I fully expect formats and themes to emerge, like The Aerobic Digest, but they need to do so organically. Plans need to be allowed to change and even fail if necessary. I want to be as surprised as you. So if you do decide to support me financially you're doing so to see where I might go with this, not to have me do the same dance each week.

I give money to a bunch of people who make stuff and put it on the internet. I also read and watch stuff made by people who I do not give any money to at all. I switch it up all the time depending on my financial situation, but there's really no logic to it and I would not be able to defend my decisions. I would not expect anyone to do differently with regard to my writing.

Thank you for reading my stuff.