A quick note to you all

Hi team

When I started writing this blog one and a half years ago, it was a simple activity to get me to stop writing back to trolls. I had a lot of fun with it and was chuffed that anyone read it.

Then, I was encouraged to monetise it by this platform that gives me access to all the stats and I cannot turn off because I never wanted to care - who is subscribing, who is paying, what the percentage of people is opening the emails that they’re getting, the list goes on and on. There were also ever increasing emails suggesting add ons - add pictures! do some videos! podcasts! chats!

I found it made it harder and harder to do something that always came naturally to me, to write. I had so much weird stress whenever I logged in and saw the stats that I tried to cancel all paid subscriptions in October last year, almost a year after I started. But the platform showed me what I would owe if I cancelled and the figure scared me - and confused me because subscribers either paid per month or annually but it appeared I had to refund the whole year in full. So I didn’t cancel.

I tried to find a new way to make it fun and paused paid subscriptions for a couple of months while I figured it out. I kept to my regular two posts a month and enjoyed them much more. I balanced it with a bunch of other projects - I’m writing a book, writing for different publications and tv shows, performing my hour of comedy, trying to write a new hour of comedy, editing reels for socials, working on two different podcasts and taking on a lot of other unpaid work because I still haven’t learned how to say no.

Once I unpaused the paid subscriptions, I just couldn’t write. It’s taught me an important lesson in that I don’t need to monetise everything I do just because I can. I’ve today cancelled all paid subscriptions - your refunds will be sorted in the next week, apologies for the delay but I’m at the airport on the way from Colombo to Singapore then Melbourne and the bank doesn’t know what to do with that information. But I promise it’ll be sorted.

The second I clicked the ‘cancel and refund’ button, even after the scary figure that popped up, I instantly feel lighter. The underlying need to vomit when I log into my page’s dashboard has now eased. I’m taking the pressure off myself and hopefully that means I can write without getting in my own way again.

This blog will move to once a month - thank you to everyone for supporting my work for this long. I hope you stick around as I continue to work through the alphabet - because I want to and not because I have to.

I also hope you’re well out there. I’ve had the most insane week stuck in traveller bureaucracy hell and I look forward to writing about that soon, when I’ve had a chance to breathe. Take the foot off the gas whenever you need, money be damned.

Big hugs

Sashi