A Note to Readers Regarding my Growing Family

Baby Boy Pearce is Due in June

Dear Readers,

Thank you for your interest and devotion up to this point, it means the world to me. As many or most of you know, my wife Alexis is with child, and is getting quite close to being to term. We are expecting a baby boy in June, which is very exciting as I will finally have someone to teach about the Glory of Rome. We already have a daughter, so we will attain perfect normality as an American family of four. We expect this to be our last child, in part because we have a somewhat small house, but more importantly because Alexis hates being pregnant, and though I love being a parent it seems to be the case that two children is the maximum amount of irritation I can withstand while remaining a reasonably good father. For those interested, here is a recent picture of us at the end of Alexis’s last day of work before maternity leave:

Alexis works at a bar, as has been said in the podcast, this is just the bar’s playground, in case you were wondering.

All of this of course means I am quite busy. Most importantly, besides that soon we will be in the range where a baby could come at any time [without being premature], I am dreadfully behind on the nursery. By now, I have most of the repairs done and am almost to the straightforward aspect of painting and installing the flooring, which means I should make it on time. On this note, I have started using Instagram again in an effort to make up for Twitter becoming worse for sharing article [of course using Instagram has absolutely no impact and doesn’t drive any traffic.] I will be greatly limiting pictures of family things on Twitter because people are weird, but if you are so inclined you can find me on Instagram, where I have a small account and this is less of a problem.

In the spring season I also have some other work responsibilities to try and make a living as I build an audience. In the “before times” I had a sort of gardening and lawn care business, which I liked a lot for a time. However, the stress of the world going retarded for covid more or less stopped that, and on top of not wanting to deal with people, I lost my passion for gardening, which was the only thing that made me good at it. Further, I never again got into the habit of laboring enough hours to make any real money. Regardless, I do still have lawn mowing clients and that is currently taking up time which I would usually devote to writing.

It is the case that my article frequency will have to go down for the time being, most of all until I finish the nursery. As any parent could tell you, even though babies don’t move much, this really needs to be done before the kid gets here instead of trying to do it with a newborn. I understand that this is disappointing to readers, especially to paid subscribers, but I would mention the only aspect of this Substack which is premium are the podcasts and even those start out free. As listeners know, a friend has taken over for Alexis from now until she can sit in a chair comfortably wearing the baby for the length of a podcast, which will perhaps be around mid July. I aspire to only miss one podcast episode due to the birth, but of course can’t promise that.

Overall, though growth speeds and slows seemingly at random [or worse, at the arbitrary whim of social media algorithms,] I am pleased with how my writing is going. I feel that I have developed a strong brand here and produce a lot of quality content. It is hard to get a feel for what is a “normal” amount of productivity for a professional writer, but my understanding is that for writing of the quality I do, 5000 words a week is about the maximum anyone could keep up at consistently, and I generally do more than that. I want to continue to publish weekly as much as possible, though besides the current circumstances a few things can prevent this. One is that I get so caught up in a long article it stretches over two weeks, which is fine, but it is my preference to not break up such articles. The second reason is that I just get further behind until my prior week’s article is coming out at 4 AM on Monday, at which point I eventually have to take a week off to catch up. The third is that sometimes there simply is no story that I am sufficiently interested in, and I figure that it is better to save my creativity and effort for the stories that I want to cover instead of writing something for its own sake. Regardless, anyone can see that I put a lot of work in here. On top of what I produce I am always studying that I may know more and improve my content. I am also currently learning French for the same purpose, though I must admit that moreso than to improve my work it is because writing so much about Francophone countries while not knowing French makes me feel like an idiot.

With a newborn it is hard to know how my productivity will be, though an advantage is that my wife will be home and I should be able to make steady if slow progress, assuming I have the ability to think clearly at all. On that note, I may try to write less time sensitive articles. I am always hesitant to write anything that I can’t promote through searches of a current event on Twitter, but that doesn’t necessarily get me where I want [especially with the algorithm hating me now,] and further, “evergreen” articles certainly have their benefits. With my mailing list at over 1,000 total subscribers there is also the fact that if my readers like something they will share it, and I don’t need to constantly shop for an audience. One example of such content would be an article about the history of state regulations on public mourning, which are quite interesting. Suffice to say, a government stopping people from leaving flowers on the graves of dead political dissidents is not uncommon. If there are any topics which you see me bring up in passing that you think merit a full article, please let me know. I think it will be an advantage to not be against the clock when I’m also on a newborn’s schedule.

Of course, it must be mentioned that a growing family means increasing expenses. This Substack does not currently bring in a lot of money, though it does produce enough to care about for someone of my relatively low cost of living. The Libertarian Institute has been great for giving me a small income boost and publishing what I send them about a variety of topics, many of which would have been hard to sell to a publication which put less faith in me. However, I had no luck sending out unsolicited pitches to different publications, to the extent that I stopped trying a number of months ago. The truth is that besides my main articles here, the podcast topics, and a few LI articles a month, I don’t have that many more ideas. I continue to look for some strategy to sort my thoughts out better, but have not found one. Still, I have recently been approached with an exciting opportunity to perhaps write for a publication I love at a rate I would be happy with, and I will be pursuing that once my time opens up a little bit. My hope remains to make this newsletter my primary source of income, as there is nowhere else that would let me write the long articles about countries all over the world drawing together diverse historic and literary sources in the way that I do here. I also struggle to write shorter and more direct articles such as most outfits are willing to buy. I am getting better at it, but going into great depth to pull together the story and the narrative and the wisdom is what I like to do and what I am good at.

I want to again thank all of you for your support and understanding, and I want to assure you that even if full articles slow down, I remain completely devoted to this project, and frankly refuse to go back to doing anything else for a living, come hell or high water. Many topics have came up recently which I would be excited to write about, if I had the time. The truth is there are few things I am good at besides reading and writing, and playing to my strengths makes me much happier and more sane. My thoughts going to productive use instead of just driving me mad has been of great benefit to myself and those around me. My wife also takes great joy in seeing me use my potential in some fashion, and has been tremendously patient and understanding as we deal with the financial hardships of building an audience. Though we are in a decent position as far as things go for weathering Alexis’s maternity leave, it is still a stressful time and I am hoping that the sympathy and goodwill of readers will be increased by the coming birth. I am putting subscriptions at a 20% off sale until the baby is born, which could technically be any time from tomorrow until July 5th, though with luck will at least be in June. You can get this deal by clicking this button:

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported this newsletter, and by extension my family, as a reader, sharer, and especially paying subscriber. I love hearing from you all and knowing that my work has an impact. I certainly don’t expect to change the world, but I am happy if I can help people stay sane and and gain a better understanding the world around them- sometimes those things feel mutually exclusive! Remember as well that it is support here which gives me the time to be so active on Twitter, make myself available for interviews, respond to readers, and everything else I do to attain and share the knowledge and wisdom which you enjoy. If you don’t already follow me on Twitter, that is the best way to keep up with all of my activities.

I suppose I have kept you long enough, though I expect that by now you are all used to my verbosity,

Sincerely,

Brad