Four years ago, I had an idea to take the lessons I was learning and share them with others. If I benefitted from these teachings, I thought others would, too. However, I didn’t share anything. Instead, I wrote them down in red and black journals with the word Moleskin on the back. I bought one fancy pen from Office Depot because my ego got the best of me, and I vainly wanted to be that guy who journals his thoughts, a guy I had been ten years prior.
In college, after a few relationships ended in miserable failure and my parents divorced, I finally turned 21 and began to do two vices: going to the bar with friends and writing. Both tasks cost time, but only one cost money, and as a poor college kid, I only had enough money for the bar.
Soon, I enjoyed sitting in my coffee shop of choice, Karma Cafe, and writing for a magical hour. Random thoughts, poems, word associations, and more seemed to flow out of me so regularly that I knew I could write all night. There never seemed to be an end to my stories. After my kids appeared, however, writing was replaced by bottles, diapers, and tantrums.
So, four years ago, I wanted to write for the first time in many years. This time, I would try my hand at online writing. As a technology-minded individual, I bought a domain and began to build my website at patrickstewart.net. I wrote long, complex tales about my life and growing up. My father leaving, the pains of being raised Southern Baptist while being bisexual and disabled, and my struggles with anxiety and tinnitus all poured like an electronic waterfall from my mind to the digital page -- relentlessly. After a few articles, I discovered a problem.
Even though I wanted to share my lessons with others online, I didn’t know if I was a “good” writer. I made A’s on all of my papers in college and even wrote a few papers for my wife when she was in school, which I did without trying. So, I had some idea that I was writing coherently. But, to know for sure, I needed readers. How could I attract readers to a personal site?
A few months earlier, Elon Musk purchased Twitter, which drove many people to a platform named Mastodon. I, too, had moved and gained about 200 followers--enough to post a link to each article I wrote on my site to see how many reads I’d earn. To my shock, the answer was many.
At first, single digits, then dozens, then 100. It was incredible! Strangers online messaged me from Mastodon and commented on how my writing had touched them or how they related. I began to see other writers post articles from a website named Medium.com. I wanted to reach more readers, and Medium provided an entire community to help. So, I soon transferred my first 11 articles from my site to Medium. Within six months, I gained 5,000 followers, and by August I had 8,000. I even began to earn a pretty good amount of money. But, just like last time, a problem arose. This time, however, the problem was philosophical.
Is it ethically wrong to place articles behind a paywall that were designed to help others?
How can others learn from my experiences if they can’t read them?
Therein lies the debate. Despite my admittedly limited success, writing articles, running The Taoist Online organization, streaming my podcast, and creating this newsletter take a lot of time. If time equals money, I’m in the red on my balance sheet. My three children, my wife, and my career cause my soul to jerk from one location to the next. I’ve always suspected I have low-grade attention deficit disorder (ADD) because my mind is constantly running a marathon of ideas and demands.
So, is it wrong that I desire to be compensated for my time? In my mind, it feels natural to want to be provided some compensation for hard work, but I can’t shake the impostor syndrome and self-doubt. Am I worth it? Are my stories worth it? If the founder of Taoism, Laotzi, had only taught those who paid, no one would know Tao.
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