in its own time

It would seem I’m overdue for my “monthly” blog post. Like anyone else, I have grand intentions of Doing Things, but then get sidetracked or something else needs to take priority or my emotional bank account is overdrawn and I have nothing left to put into words. As such, I haven’t written as much as I would like to; as much as social media marketers and “hustle culture” tell me I’m supposed to in order to “build an audience” and “attract a following” so I can “sell to more people.”

See the problem is, I don’t care. At least, not about the whole being-competitive-in-the-marketplace and getting-my-name-out-there stuff. I’m a writer, not a salesman. A storyteller, not a gimmick-hawker. An artist, not a capitalist. I don’t care about your wallet…I mean, of course I need to eat, and I would love for my words to be the means of supporting myself. But what matters more to me is that whoever does happen to read the things I write comes away with some sense of, “Oh, I never thought about it like that,” or “I needed to hear that today.”

As a result, I end up writing for quality, not quantity. One of the main reasons I collected my old blog posts into a book is because I wanted to gather the best of my last 20 years into a small volume to be read away from ads and SEO and algorithms that require you to churn out content just to be seen. Social media is how our modern world works, but it is antithetical to how the artist, the wordsmith, the craftsman wants to be in the world. Scroll through any artisan’s Instagram and I would put money on there being a post somewhere lamenting about wanting to do what they love but feeling torn about having to sell themselves in order to do it.

So whether you’ve found me as a stranger through Instagram or YouTube or Facebook or you’re an old friend whose hand I’ve pressed a QR coded-business card into, welcome. If you’re looking for someone who posts a lot, you’ll be disappointed and it’s probably best to move on to the next content creator. But if you want something a little deeper; if you don’t mind waiting for the tastier morsels, I invite you to stay. Bookmark this page, because I don’t even have a newsletter yet (another thing that makes me a “bad writer,” I guess). Make some tea or brew some coffee, ’cause it might be awhile. But I’d like to think it will be worth it. ❤