Reënchantment and Monetization

I'm writing this on a platform built for monetization, so believe me, I get it. I love that writers are supporting themselves with paid subscriptions, converting views to clicks, clicks to sales.

I think I'm not going to be one of them. I think I'm going to be one of the fools who toils in relative obscurity, and if the lightning strikes, that's great. If it doesn't, that's fine, too.

I will show up, do the work, put it out there. It will be mostly ones and zeroes; there's no point in purity on that count. I have a deep, intuitive sense that if I build a following, it will be out in the physical world, in person-to-person alliances, and that will be a heavier and heartier lift than sinking more of myself into digital ecologies.

In this, I am discovering strange affinities that trouble me politically. Paul Kingsnorth for crying out loud. On my American side, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and her Blue Dogs who James Pogue described as speaking to rural people's desire, in their consumer and political choices, to express "a deep attachment to a life rooted in the physical world." On my Jewish side, this is the neo-Hasid in me.

In my way, I was educated to be a technocrat. In this next phase, the writing life, I'm becoming something different. I can't put my finger on it. It has something to do with Reënchantment (thank you, New Yorker, for creating a safe space for the umlaut). Reveling in the whole that is more than the sum, the mysterious, the unquantifiable.

Stay tuned for more, and don't worry, I won't try to monetize you.