When I first started this newsletter, I struggled figuring out the theme of this newsletter. What connection tied every essay together? As the title of my Substack implies, the connection was me.
I’ve used this newsletter to redefine my identity as a writer. Many people associate my writing with my harm reduction journalism, abolitionist organizing, LGBTQ+ health, and other political topics, understandably so because those are all important to me. However, those aren’t the only topics I’m interested in. I’m interested in pursuing memoir as a genre via personal essays and would like to also be known for my identity as an essayist/memoirist.
The newsletter took a turn for the best last spring. I wrote a two-part series about Britney Spears that boomed my free subscriber base. (I even had people express excitement towards a part three when I hadn’t even though that far!) A shared enthusiasm of Spears pushed me to write more about pop culture.
Now, in 2024, a new season has begun here at Adryan’s POV. To celebrate my first anniversary of this newsletter, I’m launching paid subscriptions.
I’ve longed for a paywalled platform because it allows me to write more vulnerably to a selected audience. Much like a print book, paywalled content isn’t “Googeable” to just anyone; instead, it’s available to a more intentional, intimate audience.
When I started writing online over a decade ago, I wrote political opinion pieces first for my college student newspaper, then soon for national media startups. My writing was very messy. It felt more like I workshopping my personal politics out in a public forum. I faced ridicule and harassment, much that I internalized as a young writer. Nevertheless, I kept going.
Upon graduating college, I pivoted writing personal essays, inspired by peers in online writing circles like Binders Full of Women Writers and Femsplain. Many of these essays were deeply personal, covering my sex life to mental health to experiences with the medical industrial complex. I made a modest $50 or less for many of these essays.
I don’t regret the essays I published because they helped me to get to where I am today as a writer. Being an established personal essayist online helped me pivot into a freelance writing and journalism career in the mid-to-late 2010s. Still, though, I wish I had given more thought and intention to what I shared publicly about my personal life. A young twenty-something who’d just started therapy, I had a lot to learn with setting boundaries online.
Consider this an invitation: a paid subscription grants you access to more personal writing than I’m willing to share publicly. I’m not going to be dishing my most personal traumas nor exposing my biggest secrets, no. Instead, these writings are categorized “for the memoir I’ll write one day that isn’t the current memoir I’m writing.”
My first paid essay will be published tomorrow, Thursday, January 18 at 12 p.m. EST, and will only be accessible to paid subscribers. Until the end of January, I’m offering free 14-day trials on paid subscriptions.
Will you join me?