What kind of abundance do you want?
A small creative life won't bring you fame or fortune, but there are plenty of other things to be had from not going big
My husband and I spent last weekend with my parents, helping them with a big gardening project. He was able to take a day off work, and we were able to drive the nearly 4-hour trip to their place. They were able to pay for a load of good dirt, and they own a tractor that my dad was able to use to move the dirt from the place it was dumped to the garden bed we are rebuilding.
My parents are both in their 80’s, and we all have good enough health to do this work and enjoy it. Both my husband and I were able to take the whole weekend off (both physically and mentally), to be fully present with my family and in our tasks. My dad was a machinist and my mom worked a series of clerical jobs, and they’ve always lived a small, frugal life, which is how they’re now in a place we all find excessively beautiful. It was nice to spend this kind of time there.
The weekend felt abundant with things that matter to us.
While we were enjoying our abundance, there was a lot of churning on Substack about recent events with a big writer who came and abruptly left because responses to her presence made Substack feel like a place that isn’t good for her mental health.
There are a lot of different ways of looking at what happened, but this post isn’t really about what happened. It’s about abundance, which I saw come up both directly and indirectly in many, many posts and Notes that have been shared about Big Writer and others’ responses to her. Some proclaimed that, “There’s enough for everyone,” and others that, “Writing here isn’t a zero sum game.” Others argued the opposite. One writer I follow who writes for the same audience as Big Writer (or, at least, a segment of Big Writer’s audience) reported losing 50% of her paying subscriptions in the days following Big Writer’s arrival on Substack. Perhaps that was due to something else, but it lends credence to the idea that there isn’t, actually, enough for everyone when some people have extra large helpings of any monetary pie.
Because I’m not trying to eat any of that particular pie, none of the churn touched me in any way that matters, and that is a kind of abundance I’m grateful for.
This is not to say that I enjoy all the kinds of abundance that exist in the world. When Big Writer closed her Substack publication, she walked away from at least $50,000 in annual income. (Given her more than 200,000 subscribers, it was probably more.) The ability to walk away from that kind of money is a form of abundance I don’t have. It is one that most of the writers I follow or subscribe to here don’t have—even the ones who are, themselves, making that kind of money.
We each have only so much of it, don’t we? I wish I could pay for subscriptions for all the writers I read. I wish everyone who reads my words could pay me for the labor I put into them. I’d like to pay everyone, out of principle and kindness, but it’s part of my economic reality that I can’t. I don’t have that kind of abundance. This is the main reason I figure I will never put anything I write here behind a paywall. I hope keeping the fruits of my own labor free is some kind of compensation for all the valuable writing I consume but don’t pay for.
Choosing to never put my writing behind a paywall is a kind of abundance that’s available to me, in part, because I’ve chosen to live a small life.
I spent a lot of years working in a place that wasn’t good for my mental health because I didn’t have the kinds of abundance that Big Writer does. I had to stay, for a long time. Even though I have enough for now, if I could make $50,000 from my writing, it would be very hard to walk away from it because part of my interior life contains questions that those like Big Writer likely do not have to worry about: What happens if the social security income I’m counting on in a few years goes away? What happens if Medicare goes away? What happens if my child has a medical crisis and can’t access care? What will happen to my disabled brother when my parents are gone? What if prices keep increasing at such a faster rate than my now-mostly-stagnant income? How will I manage my chronic health conditions if I have to go back to work? What kind of work would I be able to get, at my age and with my skills? What happens if my husband dies or can no longer work before he’s eligible to retire?
I carry this set of worries/questions because I made the decision to live smaller than I was. I’ve chosen to live with them because the cost of these worries feels easier to bear than the costs my work extolled from my mental and physical health, and I finally got to a place where I could make this choice and be OK enough. Maybe that is a way in which Big Writer and I share some commonality, even though our lives and work are very different.
The areas of life in which I don’t have abundance are a trade-off for the areas in which I do, and isn’t that true for all of us, big and small? I don’t have to pay attention to Big Writer or worry about how the next Big Writer will impact publishing here or elsewhere because it won’t change anything that affects my survival or how I operate as a writer. I can keep on writing for my small audience and reading the circle of small writers I’ve found no matter what any of the big (or medium) writers do. Notes and reels and all the other things that change a platform do not have to change the way you use it unless you are trying to make a living (or something else) from it. I have empathy for those who are, and I don’t judge them for bringing attention to the ways in which such things as Big Writer’s arrival or new tools to master/spend resources on impact them. I don’t discount or dismiss their anxiety. We all have to eat.
I’m so glad I don’t have to share it, though. I’m so glad I don’t have to try to get a piece of the same pie that they are. That’s a kind of abundance, too, the ability to choose what kind of pie we want. (Mine is more of a tartlet, which is plenty for me.)
I will not pretend that I don’t, in some ways, envy what Big Writer has—her wealth and the peace of mind it can buy about a lot of things, mostly—but there are so many other parts of her life I would hate if they were part of mine. I’m so glad I will never, ever have to make a podcast. Or tolerate commentary about my personal life from people who don’t personally know me. Or be unable to go out for ice cream without being stared at or wondering if I’m being stared at or if someone is taking my photo to post in a TikTok. That is some of what her money and fame and success and all that they can buy costs her. I don’t know that I would trade places, even if I could.
There is a kind of abundance that comes from being an unknown. From living a private life. From not needing to care what lots of others think about us. From being free in the ways that matter to us.1
“What kind of hard do you want?” is a question my mother asked me nearly 20 years ago when I was facing a tough decision. It has helped me so many times since then. “What kind of abundance do you want?” is the other side of that question’s coin, one I’m finding equally valuable. A beloved childhood song2 told me that freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, but more and more I think that freedom is another word for abundance. I am freer in some ways than Big Writer—or anyone who’s experienced material success from their creative work—in that I have much less to lose from what comes of mine. They are freer from some kinds of worry I carry, and I am freer from some kinds of worry that they likely carry.
I hope some people will like these words I’m laying down here on this warm May morning while I’m sitting at my dining table and looking out my window to the squirrels and birds and bunnies who share a little plot of my city with me. I hope they’ll talk with me about them. But I’ll be OK if they don’t. That OKness means I am free to write what I want and do (or not do) with my words what I want.
That’s a kind of abundance I never want to lose.
I would love to hear your thoughts about freedom, abundance, small living vs. big living, ambition, or anything else this essay brought up for you. Let’s talk in the comments?
Your hearts and shares mean so much to me. If you find value in this piece, I hope you can “pay” me with one or both. I’m not after money here, but I value the kind of readers who’ve found this place and welcome more. Your hearts and shares help more readers see my work. Thank you!
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Boy, do I wish everyone in the US, where “freedom” seems to mean only one thing to so many, could be more deeply considered.
This version of “Me and Bobby McGee.”
I decided not to start my own Substack because of timing but also because I got honest with myself about how I wanted to spend my time here. I really love being below the water line and swimming in the comments. I love engaging in conversation someone else starts, like this. Maybe I am no a barnacle but for now that is serving me and my energy/ time.
The word I keep coming back to is “ enough.” At the Passover Seder, in the Haggadah (the book that leads a family through the stories of Exodus and other commentary around the importance of that story to the Jewish people, ) there is a prayer featuring the word “ Dayenu.” It means it would have been enough —it is a long list and each line ends in dayenu. Had God done x,y,z, dayenu. In the prayer, God goes beyond what is enough but I am struck by the repetition of it— it drives home that word like a reminder- you are enough, you have enough.
I am learning to embrace the shape of my days and years as enough. That does not stop me from doing more, it just gives me a steady foundation to consider some things gravy and to celebrate them that way.
Had Big Writer taken down her pay wall, would it have been enough? I also think quite a bit about the privilege I walk around with— it feels like big clown shoes and ridiculous shoulder pads that make me leave way too big a footprint and shove others aside. I wonder what the world would be like if we all were aware of our impact when we show up in new spaces and if we adjusted accordingly? What if we all read the room before we walked in it? What if those in the room demonstrated the best of themselves so others entering might learn the norms? What if the extended a little grace to someone trying to figure it all out?
"Choosing to never put my writing behind a paywall is a kind of abundance that’s available to me, in part, because I’ve chosen to live a small life."
Ditto. I appreciate that some people have to make money off what they write, but I don't so I won't. I'm not around Substack enough to know who the big deal writer was, but if she felt under-appreciated and that bothered her, then sounds like she did the right thing.
As for me? I am a nobody, happily so, thus whenever anyone bothers to read what I write on my personal blog I am content. That's enough abundance for me.