🩺 Checking in.
I'm bringing outside, a lot of what's been inside.
I’m not sure if you noticed, but a few letters back we switched on the option to financially support the newsletter. I wanted to write a little bit about that and about writing publicly.
First, A History Refresh
A Common Life started because Morgan insisted on starting it. She had the vision for sharing our love and passion for gardening and living intentionally with others. One thing led to another and the next thing I knew we had beautiful seasonal guides, a few subscribers, and big dreams. Since then, we’ve made a few operational changes, but the vision hasn’t changed.
We have plans for products, events, workshops, courses, and more. In time, I do believe we will get there. Meanwhile, our aim is to keep showing up as authentically as possible - every time we write or talk.
Authenticity
Have you ever produced something personal for the public? I can remember feeling physically ill the first time I released a podcast out into the wild. Imposter syndrome is real, and I was feeling it. There is already a lot of content out in the world, so why should I add to it? I think it is a good question to ask. And answer.
As a “content producer”, the temptation is to produce what other people want to read and consume. In fact, that is what most content producers do. They produce what others want to read and see. Which makes sense for many obvious reasons. However, my desire, as someone who produces content for public consumption, is to produce content that is of interest to me. I want to share, in a curated way, myself with the world.
Of course, this is vulnerable and risky. You might not be interested in my voice, in my interests, perspectives, opinions. Worse, you might only be interested in my voice if I talk about a certain topic. Worse than that, is if there are hundreds of thousands of people interested in my voice if I talk about a certain topic with a specific perspective. Maybe that topic was of interest to me, but over time, my perspective changed. My mind changed. My interests changed.
Since the beginning of writing publicly, I’ve been keenly sensitive to holding on to my “voice”. Keenly sensitive to when I’m performing, putting on masks. I don’t want masks. I don’t want to perform. I want to show up as myself.
But… it isn’t black and white. Life rarely is. Unfortunately. And the grey world is hard for me to live in.
Am I making sense? Being dramatic? I can hear Wade telling me I’m over-thinking it. Probably am.
Adding Paying Subscribers
If I am particularly interested in a particular topic and it resonates with our audience, having that feedback is valuable. However, I must be willing to grow, adapt, change, stop, and risk losing the attention of our audience. Because I’m worth it. And, in fact, so are you.
There are many ways to measure the value you provide to someone. Some subjectively and some objectively. One way to measure something’s value is by how much someone is willing to pay for it. Sometimes that payment is with dollars and sometimes it is with attention. After all, our attention is extremely valuable and its being fought for every waking second of the day. So, when a reader opens our emails or listens to our podcast, it tells me they value what we are doing.
As Morgan and I move forward with A Common Life and our newsletter, The Common, we hope to add more content for readers, listeners, and watchers.
Balancing the time we spend on these things with the rest of our lives is something we constantly wrestle with. By having an option for people to support our work financially, it provides us with another picture of how much people value our work and if we are finding our audience. It also provides incentive. And another layer of complexity in the ever-present battle of finding and holding on to our ourselves.
There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him.
Thomas Merton
Before you go!
💚 If you love The Common, please share it with all of your friends and family!
✎ If you are passionate about gardening or seasonal living, share it with our community and write for The Common! Email taylor@acommonlife.co for more information.
🎧 Morgan and I do a podcast. Listen here: A Common Life Podcast