Car Chat with Taylor Time

Heads up, this is a little bit longer of a chat, I recommend 1.5 or 2x speed :)

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It's Car Chat with Taylor time.

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Okay, so I wanted to talk about the paywall stuff.

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So, recently, I have been... I've just been really mulling over this.

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And I was so excited for the Panties post to come out.

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And it really had me feeling like I was really disappointed that people weren't able to read it.

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And,

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like,

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the little money grabber person inside of me,

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the person who always just wants more money,

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was like,

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well...

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People will pay to read it.

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But that's not what I want.

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Like, I'm not writing this stuff just to make money.

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Yeah, I want to make money.

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But, like, I don't expect Substack to be my source of income.

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Like, ideally, it would actually come from books.

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I have to finish writing those first.

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But, um...

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Like, it just... It hasn't been feeling right.

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There's all these posts that I've written that are behind a paywall that I think are quite good.

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And I... I mean, I'm biased.

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It's my shit.

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So, you know.

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But I just... I'm tired of people not being able to read my stuff.

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And I've subscribed to a few other writers who have completely unpaywalled their stuff.

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And...

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I really like that,

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especially because,

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like,

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I have a maximum of $15 a month that I can spend on sub-sac.

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Like, that is my literal max amount.

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And so I have to be very specific and very choosy with who I choose to pay to subscribe to.

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And I really, really love the writers who don't pay well anything.

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Um,

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and to be honest,

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like to be really honest,

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I've unsubscribed from certain sub stacks because they,

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most of their stuff was paywalled and I just was frustrated and I didn't,

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you know,

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I had already chosen my subscriptions for that month and I really try not to switch

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between sub stackers very frequently and who I choose to subscribe to.

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Um,

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So I just, I didn't want people to be put in that situation with my stuff.

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And in, I'm part of Tom, uh, I don't remember what his writing platform's called.

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But anyway, we have a Discord.

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Discord.

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And a lot of the writers in there are new, like me.

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They're small, like me.

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And we've been trying some different things,

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different experiments on how to just get more subscribers,

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have people find your writing more.

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And one of the writers was really running into a paywall issue.

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He found really fantastic stuff to read.

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And he really enjoyed it, but he wasn't able to read it.

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Or sometimes he was able to read it, but he wasn't able to comment.

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Which is a vital portion of, at least for me, the community aspect of Substack.

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I look forward to the comments.

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And really, the comments on my posts and my notes more than anything else on Substack.

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So...

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It really got me thinking, what's the point?

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The only reason why I want people to pay is just so I can have some extra money.

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That's really all it is.

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It has nothing to do with... I'm not really...

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giving anybody anything tangible maybe I will in the future but like right now all

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it is is just my writing and I'm so small and I would rather have less money and

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more subscribers if that makes sense like I would rather more people see my work

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and then choose to upgrade or choose to pay because they just want to support me

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not because they're trying to get something um and

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Like, to be honest, I feel like that's what you get with, like, other platforms.

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I don't know.

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I ran a traditional blog for so long, for so long, a year.

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I ran a traditional blog for a year and like my shit didn't get any views on there.

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And I was still writing and I was still happy with it.

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But I spent time and time and time and time and time creating all these different

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things to try to get people to pay for my stuff or to click on my affiliate links.

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And that's just not who I am.

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That's not who I am.

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And it's such a hard conundrum for me because like I would love to leave my day job.

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love, love, love, love, would love to leave my day job.

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But like the logical,

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realistic side of my brain knows that it's probably going to be about three years

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before I can do that.

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Um, like just, that's just, I think that's just a real expectation for me to have.

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Um,

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and so then if it's going to take me three years,

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I would rather it be three years of slow growth with people who genuinely want to

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be paying for me,

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um,

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Like, they just want to support me versus, you know, three years of hustling and gatekeeping.

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Like, I hate gatekeeping.

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I hate when people are trying to teach something and they completely gatekeep it or

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make it completely unobtainable.

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I understand people need to make money.

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And I think one of the biggest things I enjoy about the paid subscriptions on

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Substack is that a lot of people aren't gatekeepers.

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there's some people who are,

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but there's people who like Tom where like,

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he's not actually gatekeeping his knowledge.

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It's not his knowledge that he's gatekeeping.

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He, he, and he's not really gatekeeping anyone or anything.

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What he's doing is providing a community and a platform that's even more niche,

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even more down,

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you know,

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he's providing us with live calls and,

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um,

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You know,

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if you upgrade even more,

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you got one-on-one chats and there's,

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you know,

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there's little,

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like,

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things that you can grab onto that are,

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that you're paying for.

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And that's why I'm still paying for it.

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Because, like...

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what I'm getting from him is this immense amount of value for pennies in comparison to what I'm paying.

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Um,

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like for real,

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if you're a new writer,

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I highly recommend writers at work,

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Christina God and Tom Kuklers.

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Kuklers.

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I always screw up.

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I'm the worst with fucking names.

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the worst.

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Anyway.

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Um, so yeah, I, this car chat might come out before my other car chat that I had already recorded.

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Um,

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so it might not make any sense why I'm doing a fucking car chat because the other

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one I explained what the fuck a car chat is.

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Um, but yeah,

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And I just, like, I feel so much more fired up.

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And I think I'm going to keep my cadence of two posts a week, I think.

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We'll see how it goes.

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But I will say that Louise... Gosh, I'll have to look up her name and I'll tag her in this.

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But she really inspired me to do this.

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And...

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When I started my sub stack,

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I didn't want to turn on paid posts,

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but I just kept seeing all these things and I was like,

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fuck,

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maybe that's what I'm supposed to do.

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Maybe that's what the universe wants for me, but I don't think that's what the universe wants for me.

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And I will say that when I worked in nonprofit, when I fundraised authenticity, authenticity,

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Authentically, there we go.

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When I, when I fundraised authentically, I made way more money.

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When I started doing all of the things that everybody else started telling me to do,

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I stopped making nearly as much money.

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I mean,

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I went from making thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars,

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you know,

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as a brand new baby nonprofit in a very,

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very specific niche to making hundreds of

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Like there was a time where only my monthly donors were bringing in me any money.

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And it was, I mean, I had like five monthly donors and they weren't, it wasn't a lot.

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I mean, don't get me wrong.

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They kept my nonprofit afloat,

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but I lost so many people when I started doing it in a way that other nonprofits

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were telling me to do it.

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My former boss was telling me to do it.

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Um, and I

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It just didn't work.

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It didn't work.

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It wasn't who I am.

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This is not who I am.

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I am a person who loves fucking libraries.

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Why?

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Because they're free.

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I can get so much knowledge for free.

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I love universities who do the free courses.

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Like...

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So if that's what I am,

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and that's what I look for,

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and that's what I love,

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and then I go and donate to my fucking library.

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Like, literally, that's one of my goals.

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I want to be,

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like,

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a founder,

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a donor,

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a big donor of libraries and hospitals and places that do things for free.

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And so if that's who I am, I shouldn't be charging for my stuff.

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Like, that's just the reality of it.

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Like, that's just who I am.

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And I think I just needed to come to terms with it.

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And...

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I needed reassurance and I needed to see if there was other people who felt the same way as me.

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Um, and yeah, I shouldn't necessarily need, um, you know, reassurance.

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I can't talk today.

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It's probably because I drank a monster rain.

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I was drinking this one.

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Um, fudgesicles.

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I lost my train of thought.

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Oh, I wanted to see how other people felt and if this was a theme or if I was like completely not here.

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And I mean,

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that's why at eight o'clock this morning I posted that fucking note asking about it

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because like,

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you know,

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that's just how my brain works.

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Like I wake up thinking about things like this.

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Not always fun, but it is what it is.

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Um, so yeah, I am unpaywalling everything.

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Everybody will have access to everything.

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And if you choose to upgrade your subscription,

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you are doing so because you want to support me,

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you want to support my book writing,

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you want to learn more,

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you know,

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whatever.

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And down the line,

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sure,

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I might have some things to give to my paid subscribers,

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but I just,

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I'm done with the paywall.

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So...

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I hope you enjoy and if you want to post a week,

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let me know if you think like that's too much or if you would rather just see one

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post a week.

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And if there's something you want to hear me talk about,

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like someone told me that they would love to see more of the photos from Lily's

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like life experience photo shoot.

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So I'm going to write a whole post about that.

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If there's something that you know about me that you want to learn more about,

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or if you're like,

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I want to hear your story from this,

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or you're like,

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oh my God,

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what other crazy shit has she done?

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Because I'm kind of crazy.

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That's okay.

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Um, let me know.

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But yeah.

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Okay.

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Bye.