I Can't Do This Anymore
An exciting announcement
Something's been missing...
This year, I published an illustrated survival guide. People seem to love it. I'm still catching up on the emails since it came out. Over at Substack, my newsletter is finally growing again. I've finished my first course in electrical wiring. But this isn't good enough. We can do better.
The problem with my guide is that, despite the work I've put into it, despite the quality, it's one person's knowledge. The next version of the guide needs to be something bigger than I can produce myself. Because I can't figure out how to produce insulin or make shirts from hemp.
I can't turn the guide into an app.
Not alone.
Of course, I'm a fatal introvert, even a recluse. I can research all day long. I can write. I can design. What I can't do is interview experts. What I can't do is manage a nonprofit, an LLC, or an S Corporation. It just ain't happenin.
So when I say I can't do this anymore...
That's what I mean.
It's time to scale up and evolve. It's what the project demands. So I've started organizing a small team, people who can do this work while I stay where I'm most effective, writing stuff. The first task:
A new publication.
It's not going to be like my other publications. It's not going to replace this one. It's going to do something entirely different.
Let me explain...
The good thing about Substack and Ghost is that there's a ton of experts out there who are all focused on restoring soil, growing food, operating Ham radios, building resilient communities, and developing practical skills.
The bad thing?
We're scattered. We fall down in the feeds. Sometimes, it feels like we're competing for attention and bandwidth.
What if we collaborated?
Read this post:
Survivalutions
This new publication is going to live on Substack. It's going to bring in all the foragers, all the homesteaders, all the gardeners, all the herbalists, all the plumbers and preppers out there. It's not going to accept paid subscriptions, only free ones. It's going to elevate, promote, cross-post, and republish their work under one roof where you can find all the people who can teach you things you need to know about surviving this strange world. I'm not going to be the only one running it. We've got an editorial team.
From there...
I'm going to formally bring in some of these voices for the next version of the guide, as long as they're willing to put their name on it and contribute their work under the original, creative commons license. It's going to remain free. Even better, we're going to start working on an app, a mobile version of the guide you can use on a phone that exists alongside the print version. We're going to continue publishing the print guide with updates once a year. We'll update the app in real time, in addition to releasing PDF versions. Because you might as well use technology while you still can, right?
What do they get out of it?
My working theory is that we're better off joining forces. Sure, we can continue writing and collecting support on our own publications. We can "monetize" however we want. But we start pointing our work to some central places. We stop fighting the algorithms alone. We start learning to use them.
This isn't free labor for "exposure." It's work they're already doing, or they've already done, amplified by a collective. It's also a place for them to promote their own guides and their own books.
Think of it as a publishing collective.
That's the idea.
It's an idea that's been on the tip of my skull all year, and I've finally landed on a way to do it. This means I get to keep writing and doing my research and experiments in the quiet, but my ideas finally start to scale up in the way I've wanted for some time now.
So when I say I can't do this anymore, I mean I can't do just this anymore. It's time to finally evolve. I know how to do it now.
Please consider signing up for the new publication over at the Stack. After I send this, I'm going to start adding contributors.
Let me know what you think,
Jessica
