I have now filled in two missing November posts on my paid Substack: two review pages are up and ready to publish on November 3 and November 10. I still have only one paying subscriber, and he flat-out told me he only subscribed to support me, not because he's serious about improving his grammar, so for the moment, I'm doing a ton of work for no good reason at all.* Ideally, I'd like people to do more than care that I care; I'd like them to care enough about themselves to want to—and to strive to—improve. Unfortunately, as the saying goes: You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think. My paid grammar Substack requires effort; otherwise, what's the point? I mean, hey, thanks for the cash, Subscriber, but it's money wasted if you're not benefitting from the service I'm providing. I realize, though, that a lot of people don't want to make any effort.
Since people on Substack seem to pay-subscribe to material that demands nothing of them but merely satisfies a curious itch or a need for rage-bait, I'll be giving myself even more work by adding new "publication sections" (as they're called) to my Substack in an effort to drum up more paying subscribers. Luckily for me, this won't require making a new URL. As it turns out, I'd gotten rid of the URL called "tastygrammar.substack.com," and all that remains is "bighominid.substack.com," which makes for good, generic, omnibus branding. Right now, the only two publication sections there are my free and paid grammar/language newsletters. So it occurs to me that, instead of creating whole, new URLs requiring people to subscribe to them as separate entities, people can just subscribe to the current URL, find the publication section they want to read, and start reading. No pressure, no need to do anything else—merely be the consumers they were always meant to be.** So I'm going to start up a creative Substack where I'll slap up bad poetry, short stories, essays, and maybe—once I get good—photos and videos. I'll try to keep politics out of it, but no promises.***
All of that is coming, but not right now. I'm too close to my long walk to think about branching out in that way quite yet. Maybe later in November, or sometime in December, or possibly next year. Right now, the grammar Substack alone is a handful.
__________
*I'll at least be leaving behind the legacy of an entire grammar course... but it won't be visible unless people subscribe.
**I realize I'm being snide and ungrateful, and that I should appreciate with humility any and all subscribers who choose to invest time and money in my various products, but it's going to take me a while to tamp down the teacherly urge to look down my nose at those who make no effort—who only consume and never produce.
***I've already renamed bighominid.substack.com from "BigHominid's Tasty Grammar" to "BigHominid's Many Flavors" in anticipation of the new publication sections I'll be creating. Let the Ewoks dance with joy.
Sorry to hear your only subscriber is such a disappointment. Not to defend his lackadaisical attitude, but as a 70-year-old man, I can somewhat understand his attitude. At this stage of my life, it is a struggle to retain the things I already know. Learning new things is a stretch for my diminished cognitive abilities. Perhaps the subscriber you mention is in a similar situation.
ReplyDeleteIs he ignorant or apathetic?
Well, he was finally honest, at least. Before that, he would make placating noises about how he was trying to learn, or insisting that he thought he saw some improvement, but it was all bullshit—bullshit that came from not being honest with himself or with me. It would have been better for him to say, from the beginning, that he was getting nothing out of these attempts to improve his English, and that he really had no desire to improve.
DeleteDiminished cognition is more a function of laziness and bad habits than of age. There are 90-year-olds who are still as sharp as a tack, and it's not because they won the genetic lottery. What they didn't do was soak their brain cells in alcohol and live a life of pub-crawling: they remained physically active, read texts that made them think, worked on puzzles, and didn't say to themselves, "I'm retired, so I deserve to rest," allowing themselves to sink down into a mire of mental laziness.
I praise and respect this guy for the walking he does and for the charity he gives on the side, but there's this other side to the guy that simply isn't worthy of respect at all. And as long as he keeps retreating to the "old dog, new tricks" excuse, nothing will ever change.