/https://adamsawyer.substack.com/
Hello friends. I’ve made kind of a big decision with regard to my career and writing moving forward. I respectfully request that you come with me on this.
It’s been a long year, and I’ve been writing about it a lot. The loss of Kara, our home, and everything else back in February has changed me, what I write, and how I write, considerably. And that’s made the writing I do for work often quite difficult. I still have a huge passion for and desire to write about the outdoors, travel, and food & drink. But in a different way than I have before, on a different schedule, and for other reasons.
Right now when I have a thought or grief that needs to work its way to the surface, there’s no other form of writing that I can get accomplished until I’ve settled my hash emotionally. Still, there are some days when nothing gets done until I work that shit out. All this has put me in kind of a bind with regard to work, life, health, and happiness.
Throughout all of this, many friends have reached out to me personally to express that they have received comfort or a newfound perspective in the writings/posts/essays related to grief that I was posting on my personal Facebook page. The thought that expressing my personal grief isn’t just helping me, but could potentially be helping or encouraging other people in any way is quite humbling and actually, fills me with hope and even a bit of a sense of purpose. But the thought of capitalizing on or benefiting personally from the cause of this grief, especially when it could be helping others, just doesn’t sit well with me.
I desperately want to continue my own healing and aid others with their grieving or processing, but also continue to make a living as a writer. And I think I might have a potential solution. I’ve been looking into an online platform for publishing content that would allow me to send work to people that subscribe to me by email. It’s called Substack, and it’s quite versatile. It would allow me to have paid subscribers, but to also post free content.
What I’m going to do is publish weekly stories or essays that will span the broad array of topics I’m passionate about. Outdoors, travel, grieving, humor, addiction, love, life, loss, and on down the line, all in my voice and without editorial boundaries or constraints.
And the vast majority of the writings that I think could potentially be helpful to other people, specifically, the topic of loss and grieving – will be completely free. Friends, family, or complete strangers will be able to read and share those with anybody they see fit, for free. Meanwhile, the rest of my work will be behind a $5-a-month paywall. I think that’s a win/win, and I feel really good about it. I can write what I want, when I want, potentially help or inspire others, and continue to make a living doing what I love.
So I’m asking you, my friends, colleagues, followers, and anyone else out there that might have an interest in my writing, to please subscribe. And please share this page with any and everyone else who you think might have an interest or potentially benefit from it as well. You can totally just sign up for the free stuff too – no judgment at all!
Moving forward, any writing I do that isn’t for another publication will be found exclusively on this new platform and not in the form of a Facebook post. Also know if you do subscribe, you can expect to eventually see all of those grief posts from this year again, as I build my page and put them out into the ether for public consumption. But you’ll also be getting the essays I didn’t share on Facebook and additional new non-grief writings as well. I hope you join me on this journey. Thank you.
Adam Sawyer 