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Hello!
Tomorrow is Tết, or Lunar New Year, and it’s the year of the ox, which represents hard work and movement. It seems like an appropriate moment to make the changes and set the goals I was too depressed to do at the turn of the Gregorian calendar.
It’s been a long time coming, but I am finally hopping on the Substack bandwagon and ~monetizing~ this newsletter. Do not fret, a free version of this newsletter will continue to exist in the same way it always has, but I will be providing some additional content for my paid subscribers.
WHY I AM DOING THIS:
I have written 72 (!!) of these newsletters over the course of three and a half years, on my own schedule, at my own pace. As an artist and writer, my main struggle has always been the finite amount of time and energy in the day. Sometimes I feel jealous of people that aren’t attempting to have an artistic practice: imagine getting home at 5:30 and making dinner and watching a TV show and not feeling bad that you “should” be making art or writing or trying to Make Your Creative Career Happen. Imagine not being plagued by guilt all the time! Must be nice! I try to put time into my practice during the evenings and weekends, but I am also a human being that values work life balance and wants to be able to hang out with my girlfriend and my cat and eat pasta. There are only so many hours in the day and I have a limited amount to burn on all of the different things that I do.
I have enjoyed the structural limitations of this tinyletter, and the full lack of accountability to maintaining any type of schedule, but I recognize that accountability, room to experiment, and compensation are what I need to grow in my practice right now.
This year, my goal is to monetize my creative work so I can buy myself more hours to invest back into it. I think financial transparency, especially for creative people, is both interesting and important to share, so these are my goals:
I currently work 40 hours a week building wooden crates. I make $22/hr before tax. My goal is to make enough money on this newsletter to take two (2) days off a month to spend entirely in the studio, writing and making art (dream small, y’know). In order to keep my income flow steady, I am hoping to bring in $352 a month via this newsletter, which comes out to 79 paid subscribers. At the time of this writing, 672 people are signed up for this mailing list— if 11.7% of you choose to support me in this way, I can meet that goal.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU:
I genuinely enjoy sharing my thoughts and writing for free, and it is important to me that my writing remains accessible, so a free version of this newsletter will continue as it always has— irregularly, on my own timeline, with no accountability, featuring a longish-form essay loosely structured around a book I have recently read. They will be sent out roughly once a month, with no set schedule. If paying for this newsletter is something that is not in your budget, or is not of interest to you, I totally understand. No pressure at all— I just appreciate your time and attention.
I’ve moved my full archive over to substack, if you want to peruse back issues.
I’ve moved platforms over to Substack, but have imported my tinyletter mailing list— if you are reading this now, no need to re-sign up.
A subscription costs $5/month or $50/year. If you are interested in becoming a paid subscriber, here is what you can expect:
access to the regular free newsletter
at least (2) additional newsletters per month. One will be of a similar length and quality to these newsletters you have been receiving, though not necessarily related to a book, and one will be a short, hyper curated link round up at the end of the month (similar to what I occasionally do in my Instagram stories)— bangers only. I’ll provide a short description or pull quote, tell you how long it took me to read each piece, and do my best to curate an interesting, and varied selection of articles. Think of it as mini magazine to read in bed on a Saturday morning.
I am also interested in experimenting with more casual chatty newsletters— the type of friendly and useless content I enjoy on the internet: everything currently in my fridge, a tour of my ceramic mug collection etc. Maybe I’ll consider doing a Q&A? Excited to play around with structure more.
I used to include more studio updates in my newsletter but over time those portions have been trimmed for word count and due to stupid arbitrary rules/superstitions I created for myself. I am hoping to use this platform to tell you more about in-progress projects and my studio process.
if I fail to send any newsletters for over two months, I’ll refund your subscription fee for those months.
if you sign up and your budget changes, or you decide I am simply too annoying to let into your inbox, you can downgrade to the free subscription at any time or unsubscribe.
This is the button you click to subscribe!
Thank you, as always, for reading. It means the world to me. My first /official/ substack newsletter will go out early next week! It’s about Interior Chinatown, Asian American identity, and my messy and perhaps terrible feelings about the way this has all been playing out online this week. It’s a free one, so everyone will be able to read it.
Chúc mừng năm mới!
I love you all,
Nicole
