Hitting the pause button

I need some time off

Wikimedia Commons / BrendonIrwan

I started here a little over a year ago because I wanted to be more ambitious about what I could achieve as a writer. What if I made all my money from my own words, instead of writing being a “fun” side project while I pay the bills with client work? The whole Substack-Patreon-subscription model gives writers like me (i.e., ordinary people) a real shot at building a long-term revenue stream for ourselves. And given that my book was such a success, I thought, why not think bigger? Why not dream of a career where I can support myself entirely from writing about the things that matter to me?

One year later and things are looking pretty good. At the time of writing, I have 253 paid subscribers, enough to pay my rent and my health insurance. This is a pretty big deal, considering I entered this with basically zero expectations. The fact that 253 people out there want to pay for words that I write every month is low-key amazing to me — thank you to every one of you who’s decided that my writing is worth paying for. 

However, 253 paid subs is not a full-time salary. As well as my newsletter, I also make money from selling my book — which has been a really good source of revenue, mainly because I published it myself. I also do speaking gigs and client work. All of that combines to make a pretty ordinary middle class income, enough for me to pay my bills and treat myself to nice things without the fear of bankruptcy. 

However, a big factor here is the fact that me and my girlfriend share a small flat in Berlin, which is extremely cheap thanks to Germany’s very German commitment to rent control. We are, frankly, going a little bit insane sharing a 48sqm place in what feels like the center of the city’s alcohol/heroin/crack epidemic, and would love to move somewhere that’s a) bigger and b) surrounded by less public substance abuse. I also don’t have any of those big grown up things like kids and a mortgage, and would like to feel that at 36 years old that I can plan a future for myself that doesn’t depend on extremely low living costs (it would be literally impossible for me to do what I do in the US, and extremely hard back home in the UK).

I also need to be realistic about the fact that my first book won’t sell forever, and that newsletter businesses need to be constantly growing otherwise they’ll shrink through subscriber churn. If I’m going to make this freelance thing work then it needs to really work. I need to discard my emotional baggage about capitalism and be a bit of a capitalist. I need to grow my business!

That means I need to build a much bigger and more ambitious strategy for this newsletter. 

It also means I need to write another book.

I’ve worked in media for over ten years now, so I’m used to juggling a bunch of stuff at once. But I do not have the capacity or the headspace to build a new Substack strategy and write my next book and keep on top of my client work and keep posting here. Or at least I can’t do it without burning out, which I did once already and don’t want to do again, or without doing a shitty job of it all, which isn’t an option either.

Something needs to give, so I’m hitting pause on the newsletter.

I won’t be posting here for the rest of the year, and all payments will be paused until I’m back.

If you’re on a monthly subscription, your payments will stop until I start posting again, and if you’re on an annual plan then the year you paid for will carry on once I’m back.

This will give me the space to plan a bigger and more beautiful future for my newsletter, while also diving headfirst into my next book. It’s very exciting! The biggest thing I’ve taken away from the success of my first book is that I am at my best when I’m thinking big. Rather than strolling through life going from one thing to the next, I want to be more ambitious. The parts of my book that got me truly excited were connecting the dots between fashion and what’s happening in the rest of the world.

That’s why I’ve been slowly experimenting with other topics — like capitalism’s toxic positivity and the hidden philosophy behind so many of the world’s crises. That’s the direction I’ll be going in the future. Writing about fashion, yes, but also about the bigger picture and where we belong in it. Actually, my next book isn’t about fashion at all. It’s scary, but exciting. I’m also learning to loosen my writing — which is why I’ve started experimenting with broader roundups (see here and here) as well as the opinion pieces that people mainly know me for.

TLDR: I won’t be posting here for the rest of the year, and I’ll be back bigger and better in early 2025. You won’t be charged a cent between now and then. 

Thank you for reading, and thank you to everyone who’s paid for my work since I’ve been here.

See you in 2025.