Dear Reader...

Where should I go from here?

Hi everyone,

I need your help figuring out what to do here.

I started this Substack two and a half years ago, partly because I needed an outlet for the daily horror I was ingesting and to talk about my work helping to build Tech for Palestine. But I also thought if people only knew more about the history of Palestine and the truth about Israel, support in the global north might weaken and eventually Palestine might be free. I still think that, and I’m not planning on changing it.

The open questions I have are about content, frequency, and how I promote it.

Since the beginning I have tried to focus on the genocide unfolding in the Gaza Strip, and avoided centering my feelings and worldview. At the same time, I think my untraditional upbringing, life experience, and philosophical position provides a relatively rare perspective that can’t be easily dismissed by skeptics, which is why sometimes include or center references to my positionality in my posts.

That is, my identity as a white, cisgendered, heterosexual, atheist, man without a college degree and descended from the European settlers who colonized “North America” (Canada on my Mom’s side, the United States on my Dad’s), I’m immune to critiques composed of racism, Islamophobia, pinkwashing, academic elitism, etc.

In other words I’m a good ole’ fashioned red-blooded, white-skinned, middle-aged American. Not some brown or black-skinned Islamic fundamentalist who was brainwashed at the university. Hell, I’m even an honorably discharged veteran of the US Army (never mind that I only served twenty months and hated every minute of it.)

I generally post somewhat infrequently. I think I average one and half to two posts a month. I also don’t really promote my posts. I often don’t include a header image (which probably makes posts more appealing), and I only share posts on various social media platforms sporadically and almost always only once. I have no plan to monetize.

The number of people who subscribe has consistently (but slowly) increased over time, with the number of subscribers currently at four hundred and sixty. I think that’s great but it would be awesome to have impact at a much greater scale if possible.

The conundrum I have is that I feel like what it would take to grow significantly (essentially “professionalizing” how I approach the whole process) would make it appear less authentic and heartfelt, and thus less impactful.

Anyway I’m sorry for the length of this. It was supposed to be a couple paragraphs at most in which I ask why you subscribe, what content (personal, analysis, news, or the current “all of the above” approach) and cadence you prefer, and whether you think I should keep it small and organic or try to scale it. So if you want to ignore all the above and just answer those questions that would be great.

If you don’t want to leave a public comment below you can email me. My email address is TM—my last name—99 at gmail.com.

Thanks for reading.