Do/Don't Give Me Money

No, this does not create an attorney-client relationship. Stop asking!

After several years, I finally turned on paid Substack subscriptions! Give me your money! Or don’t, actually. I’ve had an inchoate aversion to doing this for many potentially irrational reasons. One is that my overriding priority is to be read than to be paid, and so I have no plans to put any of my writing behind a paywall. The only exceptions I can presently contemplate is maybe some future posts with sensitive/personal details whose audience I’d intentionally want limited. Besides that, I intend to ensure that all my writing will remain accessible to all.

Second reason is — how to say this? — that I don’t need money? It’s quite a gauche statement to make but what I mean is that, contrary to popular portrayals of immiserated public defenders, I actually get paid very well doing my job job. I don’t want anyone to ever think they should send me money because I’m on the brink of poverty or something. I write because I enjoy being part of the conversation, and because I’m unfathomably grateful that apparently thousands of you have any interest in what I have to say. However, the difference cash money would indeed have would be on how much more of my time I could divert towards to writing.

And lastly, I wanted to avoid establishing any expectations only to let them go fallow. Because of my job job, my writing isn’t and will not be on any regular schedule; I just go until the passion takes hold and I find the time! That will remain the case for the foreseeable future unless somehow it becomes financially sustainable enough (inshallah) to make it my full-time gig. Until then, you’ll take what you can get and you will like it. Now, where’s my money?