This site is totally public. Anyone can see this, read that, and/or click around here. Frankly, I need money to cover costs as well as keep myself motivated. It takes heart and skill and time to make this available to you.
As the author of this website, I’m an artist with a virtual tip jar or a digital hat. (if you can’t easily find a way to give me money and you want to – simply mail a check to Beth Jaffe, P.O. Box 7513, Missoula, MT 59807 – that’d be really nice.) Soon I’ll get this off the ground technically and when I do, I’ll have thank-you gifts that will be products in an online store.
I originally imagined this thing as a paywall oriented blog where people would need to pay the ferryman to get to the right to log in and see all the good stuff and post comments.
This is what I said:
“On the other side of the paywall, there is awe, laughing, and healthy crying – the kind that cleanses the muck from one’s heart. And there are fun links and recipes and stories. And serious stuff too like tips for dealing with annoying problems and of course, tips for changing the world. And special offers for a few cool things, but not many because it is truly awesome on the other side of the paywall. It is better than Utopia over there.
This side of the paywall is very boring and oh so drab.”
So time passed and I’m moving on, but I am unable to enable the pop-up technology that invites you to do this or that while you desperately try to find the X that will close the popup box. This is not because I don’t know how. It is because I hate that. I am a hater of popups. There. I’m admitting it freely. I delete games on my phone that have popup ads. I never sign up for the newsletter or give money to a popup. So I’m never going to ask for your email or money in a popup.
But. I am taking this seriously and I’m going to need those things – emails and money – to keep going.
Is it all a selfish thing?
Perhaps yes. Truthfully, I’m trying to raise the bar on my standard of living. But I don’t define that by simply expecting more money for doing less. (And indeed I want to do less for more money.) Raising the bar on my standard of living is taking the time to live thoughtfully, healthfully, and with the most fun possible.
I need a really big fan club/online community to help me for a few reasons. These reasons will become clear in later posts. For now and in short, I have lots of great ideas and I’m looking for great advice. Two things I’ve found often and easily is advice and judgment. People love telling me what to do and how to do it better and why I shouldn’t have done this or that. And why my shoes are not cool and my hair too wooly.
So, I know folks like sharing their thoughts with me. I’m approachable that way. I’m also confident I can host a decent dialog. I know people want to connect in person and online without lots of obnoxious advertisements or popups or trolls (more on trolls). People want a safe place to be vulnerable and witness brave vulnerability/human-ness in others.
Sometimes people berate me and others fear me. I’ve been declared an actual enemy of G-d. I’ve been the target of mean girls and violent men. Folks seem to feel better putting me down. Yet, I am a unique kind of brave soul that others find fascinating and sometimes worth emulating. Some people love being in awe of my awesomeness. However, even though I seem very open wearing my feelings on my sleeve, most people have no idea who I really am because I’m deeply shy. I like being understated and private. I’m offering the opportunity to know me and be part of my fun and wild world in trade for a little bit of money and thoughtful participation in a brave experiment on better living.
That is not selfish. That is me sacrificing privacy – something I adore – so that others can feel good about themselves and perhaps help me raise the bar for not just me, my family, and our online community, but for all those people who are walking around too full of anger and pain to even notice that the sun puts on an amazing free show almost morning and every evening. I want a better world and I’m looking for help in making that happen.
