the plan for now

Substack only works if you keep generating material, so your Substack site has to remain live and active. For the current course I'm working on, that's not a problem: I've got enough material to last me for literally years. Just getting through parts of speech is going to take me through the beginning of March next year; getting through punctuation will take me about halfway through June; getting through clauses and other sentence-level structures will get me through part of August, then there's a whole list of common errors to get through, and God only knows how long that's going to take.

But with my trans-Korea walk along the Nakdong River path coming up, the current plan is to create and schedule a few more paid-content posts, then to create a few more quizzes for both free and paid content. I don't know whether I'll be able to create tests before I leave for my walk—those would be about thirty questions long as opposed to five—but we'll see. I've already made enough free content to last to the beginning of December, so that's done and dusted, as some Brits might say. Then the grind will begin again upon my return.

It's certainly been a nonstop thrill ride since I began seriously making content for Substack. My subscriber count hasn't increased; if anything, I lost a subscriber—I'm guessing someone who couldn't hack it and didn't want to do any actual work (or, more charitably, someone who got disgusted by my sense of humor, which is admittedly juvenile, gross, and un-PC). But as I often tell others, it's better to be busy than bored, even if this shit isn't making me any money. The "Substackian" wisdom I've heard is that it takes a few months to gain traction and begin to see any sort of jump in the numbers, so I'll keep plugging away, hoping to gain an audience. If nothing comes of these efforts by next spring, well... I might have to move on to Plan B.

As always—fingers and tentacles crossed. Meanwhile, today, it's the usual: get through the day's exercise routine, study some Spanish on Babbel (I use the app every day now), crank out more paid Substack content, and do a 9K walk tonight. I've also got Coupang deliveries to pick up from my building's lobby. The excitement never ends.