I want to apologize to all the substack authors that I have recently had to unsubscribe from. I still love you! But we are experiencing a tightening of the monetary noose, and are eliminating everything not absolutely necessary—note, please, that I find you necessary, but not absolutely so.
I don’t know what the record is for the number of subscriptions held (100? 200?). But at $5 a month, $100 = 20 subscriptions. I am sure I had more than that!
That’s why I have never offered paid subscriptions. I couldn’t afford it!
I will miss any posts I can no longer read, I am sure. Maybe that will mean I will have more time to write, but it will also mean less food for thought. Maybe more time for prayer, or walking the dog.
Many of you write about unplugging from the media flux that threatens to overwhelm us. Some of you have entered monasteries to do so. Others have taken sabbaticals or withdrawn for a time. I hope to write more poetry and science, and perhaps it will be more original, more focused on my particular calling.
And today I saw for the first time on Substack someone say something about the search for holiness. Hurrah! Not a search for my truth or authenticity or creativity. Holiness. It may have been the same person who quoted Michael O’Brian. At a talk in Canada, he asked the audience to be true to whatever place and work they were called to, no matter how insignificant they seemed. I take that to mean that if we all follow that still, small voice, the world will not triumph (a word another friend commented on). It’s not up to us to fix things, or solve things, or transform the world. We are the ones who need transformation, and it will happen not because we are stoic, or wise, or know what our thick desires are, but because we obey that still, small voice.
Not that I won’t resubscribe when I can.
No worries! You are being a good steward and that is what is needed. You can still subscribe for free.
Substack needs a bundling option: you pay, say, $50/mo. then assign it to a certain number (10? 20? 50?? 5000, with only one cent per subscription???) of Substacks that allow for bundled subs. If some writers are like "No, only $5 per reader will do!" they can opt out of accepting bundled subscriptions.
Anyway the Substack model doesn't really work with paid subs coming _from other Substack writers._ For the most part if a writer is expecting to make a useful income from Substack, they have to be promoting in other platforms and bringing readers to Substack.