[Main Blog Post] [Book] Thoughts on The Sunlilies - and a Request

[jprussell]

Another fairly short write-up of a book I read of late, this time The Sunlilies by Graham Pardun. Though this book is written from very much within the Eastern Orthodox worldview, I found it to have a number of useful spiritual insights for those of us outside of that, but your mileage may, of course, vary.

Besides the post, I also have a request: I would very much appreciate it if you enjoy my writing if you either a) subscribe to my DIY mailing list, or b) let me know in a comment whatever reasons you'd prefer not to.

While I am mainly writing as a way to gather and sharpen my thoughts, it's nice to have some idea of whether what I'm writing is worthwhile to folks. Email subscriptions tend to be a pretty strong indicator of genuine interest, and should writing ever turn into a part of how I earn my keep, email lists are very helpful (promoting new books, soliciting more direct feedback, and so forth).

So, I'm starting to feel my way around that whole process, but refusing to do it the easy way and just creating a substack. Not that I'm going to start selling anything any time soon, and if I ever do, I will give everyone on the list a chance to get out of Dodge before the shilling commences, and after that, I will do my very best to make it occasional and non-annoying.

Oh, and btw, if you are not interested in subscribing, I will in no way be offended, but I would be just as glad to hear your reasons, as that also helps me understand the landscape I'm dealing with.

Comments

[causticus]

Hey Jeff, on

(b) I have similar reasons as SDI re: signal/noise, though I am very much interested in sociology and society. Besides that, I see all of your posts in my feed here without any difficulty, so subscribing by email would be quite redundant and unnecessary.

On being reluctant to blog on substack, I feel you. One of the big dangers of participating on a big platform with a big user base (youtube and twitter being the most notorious) is having your content succumb to what I (and I think some others have) would term "audience capture." If your blog were to be successful to the point of having at least a few paying subscribers, you might find yourself writing what they want to hear rather than what you really want to talk about.

Even on this tiny little platform I've found myself refraining from making public posts on topics I don't think my subs would have any interest in; the last thing I want to do is clog up their feeds with the written equivalent of white noise.

Having said all of that, a substack might be a good idea if you were to write about a single theme or topic you might think would have broader appeal than what you normally post about there. I'm thinking of going that route if I were to build myself a content brand around a topic I'm intensely interested in (like history) that might be able to attract an audience larger than the very niche stuff we tend to talk about here on DW.

[jprussell]

As I said to sdi above, fair enough, and thanks very much for this feedback. "Audience capture" is a concept I've thought about quite a bit, and I try to strike the right balance between not succumbing to that and also not just sniffing my own farts, as it were. A tough balance!

As for substack, yeah, I've had some similar thoughts, but I've gotten some pretty strong nudges through intuition, meditation, prayer, and so forth that I need to strive to weave together my various weird threads (wait till I get back to posting on Old School D&D!), which is another reason I've avoided it.

I've also worried a bit that the convenience of posting here is eating into email subscribers, but my current hosting solution doesn't really handle comments (a Github static site, which won't run any javascript of any kind), so having a nice, (fairly) easy way to let folks comment has won out. I've arrived at that for a few reasons (ease of set up and administration, hardening against degradation of the internet, and so forth), but I do sometimes look enviously upon the substackers I enjoy and think "why don't I just do that?"

At any rate, once again, thanks very much for your feedback, even if it's not exactly what my over-inflated Ego might most hope for ("all your writing is great, thanks for reminding me!").

Cheers,
Jeff