Blogkeeping Notes for the Holidays

Hello Friends,

I made a real post about twelve hours ago and there’ll be another one tonight or tomorrow morning.

This is just my every-several-weeks recap of what I’ve done the past few weeks, where to find me when I’m not here, and how to keep my lights on so I can keep writing.

This past few weeks was mostly political with the horrifying buildup and heartbreaking result of the election, but we also had the story of how I finally replaced my car and got back on the road! We got to see my return to praying in nature. I finally put the garden to bed for the year, and Jimmy’s boy and I became stepparents of a disaster cat. The cat still comes for a visit at least once a week because she knows I’ve got a stack of cans of Fancy Feast waiting at all times.

What you may not know is that these past few weeks, I started a Substack for my political and social justice writing that’s not overtly Catholic, and also for fifteen-minute-or-so audio posts that may someday become an organized podcast. Most of my Substack posts are free, but there will be a couple per week for my paying customers. Once I realized the weekly Politics Updates were not going to stop after the election but would have to be a regular feature for years, it just made sense that I split it up that way.

So, please follow me on that Substack if you want to continue to get ALL of my thoughts on life and politics, and keep following me here for my posts that are overtly Catholic or about life as a bad Catholic in northern Appalachia.

There’s an option to subscribe to pay a small amount monthly or a chunk all at once and get all my posts, and I do badly need more paid subscribers, but I also would love to have a lot more free subscribers who read and share my work.

Next, please be aware that Twitter is now called X, but it ought to be called P because I feel like I’m wading in a septic tank when I go to that social media platform. I’ve become more famous for my pithy Twitter takes than for my long-form writing, and I’ve enjoyed becoming something of a Twitter personality. But lately, I get next to no engagement except white supremacist trolls with Vatican flags in their profiles or bots trying to sell me psychedelic mushrooms. So I’m still going to be posting on X until the earth is absorbed by the sun, but I’m moving my primary base of operations to Bluesky. Follow me on X if you’re still there. Follow me on Bluesky for fun and games. I have decided that Bluesky will be the location of our annual virtual Christmas parties where we all sit down in our separate homes and watch the same Christmas movie at the same time and tweet about it to each other. The first of those will be on Black Friday evening. Hope to see you there!

Finally, as always, the financial part.

I get a check whenever I finish a writing project at the newspaper or elsewhere, and some months I make a lot off of that and some months I make zilch. I get a very small check from Patheos for my clicks in the United States and nothing for clicks in most other countries. I get a small royalty check for my print books. I get money from Substack subscribers and will hopefully get more. And the rest of my living is gratuities from readers who like my work and want to keep my lights on so I can write more, who put a few dollars in the tip jar whenever they can.

With the changes in social media algorithms and especially with Twitter becoming a septic tank, I have lost a chunk of the clicks-on-Patheos portion of my living and especially the spontaneous tips portion– not to mention that most of my other writing projects come from someone liking a blog post they found randomly online and offering me a contract to write something for them. The algorithms are so erratic that I never know who’s going to see what I post. So, if you like my work, the VERY best thing you can do is to share it and post it on your own social media, leave comments, and talk about how much you like me. That’s the nicest thing you can do for me short of leaving me a million dollars in your will.

And, of course, if at all possible, please do hit the tip jar when you can. I have a paypal button here and a Venmo here. The Paypal button says “donate” but it’s not a charitable donation, it’s just a tip I pay taxes on. With Thanksgiving next week and Christmas before long, I badly need a few big tips to break even just now.

And now, back to writing worth your time!