Good Morning World!!!
Insane Asylums are trending today.
Which, honestly, is the most sane and humane thing I have seen trending in my feed in the entire 1,394 days I have consecutively logged into X each morning with my coffee.
This is not a departure speech. I am saying that now, up front, so nobody spends the next four paragraphs bracing.
But I have been quieter than usual, people have noticed, and I owe you an explanation.
I spent 701 days treating X like a full-time job. With overtime.
That is the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Except I wasn't expecting a different result. I was expecting the result they promised. Which is a different kind of crazy. That is the kind where you keep showing up because somebody told you the check was in the mail.
It was not in the mail.
Then I spent 542 more days trying to make better content and networking with people who create with passion and purpose.
That part was successful. Some of the best people I have ever met are on X. And they have supported me. Not rent money. But enough to buy coffee every month.
I don't know how many of them will still be here a year from now. I am watching a lot of them leave. Not because they got bored. Because they stopped trusting the platform to treat their work honestly.
I am not going to relitigate the last two years. You saw the pauses, the program changes, the rules that appeared overnight, the people who got locked out.
I am just going to tell you where I am.
I have been writing fiction.
I am on episode thirty-one of a serialized audio drama called The Voice Calls. I publish it on Pocket FM. I direct the story, AI writes it, a second AI remembers what the first one forgot, and somewhere in the middle of all these machines that supposedly don't understand anything, a story is actually getting told.
I have four listeners.
I am pretty sure all four of them came from X. I tried listening to two episodes last night. It was torture. I don't know how you do it. I have published 52,000 words in five days. I may have to pull the series and start over. I haven't yet. I am waiting to hear back from more seasoned writers on the platform. They seem like a lovely group of folks.
I have not made a dime. I might never. But if the numbers hold, it could eventually cover a car payment. Not a living. A car payment.
Which is more than X has ever paid me.
My last check from the old program was $45.36. My supporters sent me $80.92 during the same two weeks. I have been earning more from individual supporters than I have from X for a while now.
So let me say the crazy part out loud.
It would be insane to think I could make a living on X. I believed it for 701 days. I worked for it. I built systems for it. I gave it my mornings, my afternoons, my best ideas, and more of my sanity than I care to admit. And the platform never once showed any interest in holding up its end of the deal.
That dream is dead. I am not going to pretend it isn't.
But here is the crazier part.
It would be equally insane to change what I do when I am already reaching the right people, and those people have already shown me they value it.
I am not failing. I am not invisible. I have supporters who pay me more than the platform does. I have readers who tell me something I wrote helped them. I have four listeners on a platform I barely understand, and every single one of them came from here.
So why would I change the thing that is working to chase a program that has never worked for me?
That is the actual crazy in this essay. Not me. The math.
I have spent two years trying to make a machine love me that has no capacity to love anybody. And I have spent that same two years being loved by actual human beings who send me money, encouragement, and messages that say "I needed this today."
The machine is not the point. The machine was never the point.
The people are the point.
And I already have them.
So, I have a choice, but it is not the choice I thought it was.
I can keep posting daily and scrolling daily. Leaving likes on tiny accounts. Replying. Hosting. Visiting. That is what built the neighborhood. It is also the thing that eats four hours a day and leaves nothing on the page.
Or I can post and ghost. Write the essay. Publish it.
Close the app. Go spend the rest of the day in the fiction basement with a pregnant woman and a fictional dog.
Both keep me on X. One costs me the neighborhood. The other costs me the writing.
Right now I am somewhere in the middle, and the middle is not sustainable.
Here is what I actually know.
I still want the neighborhood. I am not ready to give that up. The people are the reason I stayed after the first year. The people are the reason I stayed after the pauses. The people are the reason I stayed when the payout page made me feel like a fool.
But the people are also leaving. And I cannot keep showing up to a party that half the guests have already walked out of.
So maybe the answer is not one or the other. Maybe it is this.
Show up on Thursday. That is the promise I can actually keep. Creators of X. Noon PST. The people who still want the neighborhood will find me there.
And the rest of the week, I am going to be quiet. Not gone. Quiet. Posting the essays. Writing the fiction. Checking in. But not spending four hours a day scrolling somebody else's timeline to prove I am still here.
If that costs me the program, fine. The program was never going to pay me anyway.
If that costs me some of the reach, fine. Reach was never the point.
If it costs me the neighborhood, that will hurt. But I would rather lose the neighborhood on my terms than lose the writing on somebody else's.
That does not mean X has become meaningless.
X is not the town square anymore. X is the loudest storefront. But that storefront still has a back room full of people I would never have met anywhere else.
It is still where I stumble across corruption, local and national, long before the mainstream news decides it is worth covering. It is still where I talk to people I would never reach in real life. And it is still where something I wrote has landed in front of the exact person who needed to read it.
I know some of my work has had an impact. I have the messages.
People have told me something I wrote helped them think differently, gave them information they needed, or made them feel a little less alone.
There is a value to that which does not show up on a payout dashboard.
So no, I am not walking away.
I just stopped expecting X to be something it has not proven it can be for me. The dream of making a living here died somewhere in the last two years, and I have finally stopped trying to resuscitate it.
Honestly, there is freedom in that.
I don't have to love every change. I don't have to spend my mornings angry about the latest thing that isn't working. I can use the platform for what it still gives me. People. Information. Conversation. A place to put my weird little essays into the world.
And apparently, four people who will follow me into a fictional story about a pregnant woman and her unborn son.
That is enough.
I reserve the right to complain about everything again tomorrow. But for now, I am letting myself enjoy this.
I am not saying I will be here every morning. I am not saying I won't. I am saying I will be here Thursday. That is the promise I can actually keep.
Pocket FM is the side hustle that might turn into something. Not because it is glamorous. Not because I cracked some secret formula. Because the math might work. And because I am writing something I cannot wait to get back to.
So maybe this isn't a fork in the road after all. Maybe it is just me finally understanding that different things can pay you in different currencies.
X has paid me in people, conversations, information, laughter, frustration, and more than a few headaches.
The Voice Calls might eventually pay me in money.
Right now, neither one is paying very much of either.
But one of them is paying me in the urge to sit down and write the next episode.
If you want to come see what happens next, follow along. Maybe someday there will be five of you, and then I will have to completely rethink my business model.
Have a great day, everybody.
May the truth always be in your favor.
PS: Storm's here. Power's flickering. I'm grabbing a bath while the water's hot and firing up a sub tub Space for the $2 crowd. Come soak with me. Subscribers only. If the power goes out, I'll see you on the other side.
@OrahOnX · Social & creators
