Unless you are particularly sour to such things, you may have noticed that something is lacking on this project: Advertising.
There are no popups. There are no paywalls. There are no subscriptions or memberships or signups. There are no requests for donations or me begging for money (and no, this is not one of them.) It is not an oversight or a bait-and-switch or a free trial until I get bigger and need revenue.
It’s purposeful. It’s philosophical. Probably a little privileged, sure, but it’s what I believe is right for at least some of the work I make.
It’s not that I haven’t and don’t elsewhere dabble in trying to earn some side cash from my online projects. I’m not independently wealthy or above paying basic bills. Monetization was my mild obsession for a while, actually, to offset costs. But I can tell you the two big things that side-hustle culture doesn’t easily result in for me: cash flow and happiness.
We have been deceived into believing that everything we make, every word we write, every note we play, every photo we take, every art we create, and every word we utter should be part of a brand, a pitch, our creative time building to some kind of passive income fever dream of pretend financial freedom.
But it doesn’t always need to. Shouldn’t always need to.
And I should not need to explain that. I shouldn’t need to justify creating and sharing a thing like this site for the simple joy of it. I shouldn’t need to make an excuse for giving these words out for free because it makes me happy to write them, record them, and post them.
Making stuff for the sake of simply making it can be an important kind of intrinsic compensation, too.
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