I have a lot of blog posts and videos in the pipeline, but I’m feeling some anxiety about where all this work is taking me. Don’t get me wrong, I love blogging for the sake of blogging, it has improved my life immeasurably and has had major professional benefits as well. But it’s not very lucrative, and neither is academia, so I’m developing other plans too. I have some ambitions in commercial publishing and business, but these things move slowly and the rewards are far in the future. Meanwhile, I love blogging and Twitter (and also, recently, YouTube) because they’re so immediate. I write stream of consciousness threads, turn them into posts and videos, and continually refine and update them in response to all the feedback. It’s fun, like teaching without all the bureaucracy!
Someone on Twitter suggested that I try Patreon, and my feeling is, why not?
So what am I hoping to achieve with this?
- Money in my pocket so I can keep rolling out the blog posts and videos with less guilt and anxiety about other things I’m supposed to be doing.
- More feedback from the people who value my stuff the most, and more incentive for me to give them more of what they want.
- A new place to build community. Apparently there are a lot of lurkers out there who don’t write blog comments or Twitter replies but who would happily make their presence known through Patreon. Someone suggested I do Adam-Neely-style Q&As, and I love this idea. I’d also be open to taking requests for songs to analyze or production techniques to break down. I’m interested to see what other ideas you folks have for me.
I have undertaken all of my online activities in the spirit of, okay, well, this thing seems cool, what happens when I post a lot stuff here? So far the rewards (lots of new friends, some great jobs, a doctoral fellowship, regular dopamine hits) have vastly outweighed the downside (occasional right wing hate mail). So let’s see what transpires with Patreon!