Super secret sneak peek

What I'm working on next

OMG! It’s my first email to paid subscribers. Hello, you! Thank you for being here!

If you’re not yet a paid subscriber but you’re seeing this, that’s because it’s a preview! Just a little taste. See? If you scroll down a little bit, it cuts off. I don’t plan to send a ton of previews, but you can expect one every now and then. (Here’s the post where I talked about adding a paid tier, if you’re confused.)

Okay, some housekeeping before we get into the actual content of this email.

1. My plan is to send an email to paid subscribers (holy crap you guys, thank you!) the first week of every month. This month is late, since I just announced the paid tier last week and I wanted to make sure everyone who wanted to sign up off that email had time. Also, I had a deadline last week and this week,¹ so that’s been A Lot. But going forward: first week of the month is the goal.

2. All emails to paid subscribers will be through the Extra Special section. If you’re getting this, good work! You don’t need to do anything!²

3. If you ever want to go back and look at anything I sent to paid-only, here’s the link, or — on my Substack page — check the Extra Special tab on top.

4. Topic suggestions and Q&A! For now, I’ll just remind you that you get those things in the monthly emails. You can leave comment if you have something! Eventually, we may move those into a dedicated email, but I want to see how much those are wanted before I risk embarrassing myself with an empty comment box.

I’ve been trying and trying to think of what a good first email to paid subscribers should be. Something fun? Personal? Controversial?

I started and deleted a bunch of things. Well, one I added to a different document to probably talk about later. I think it’s a good topic — spoiler: it’s about the local wild birds — but the backstory for all that is a little heavier than feels appropriate to share in the first email.

So for inspiration, I looked at my list of paid-subscriber benefits again and I realized I could share . . . a super top-secret exclusive HINT about what I’m working on next.