Introducing the Side Notes website
My plan for internet domination takes a blog-sized step forward.
I started this newsletter right around the time our girls were placed with us. It was September 2018. We were becoming an insta family. Life was frenetic and—as the cool kids of today are wont to say—cray. No better time, I thought, to add one more thing to my plate. So I committed to writing regular dispatches from the foster-to-adoption front.
And then all of you appeared. And this newsletter kind of became a thing. You read and replied and commented on Facebook. Not only did this newsletter give me an outlet for processing all of the everything that is foster-to-adoption, but it helped to forge a community of inboxes. Email, after all, is the last safe space in this world, and you welcomed my musings, griefs, celebrations, and emo rock with open rates arms.
But throughout these past three-and-a-half years, I have been longing for a website of my own. I desired this for lots of reasons, but one of them was so that I could own a little corner of the internet. This newsletter started on TinyLetter. Substack will, one day, not be the email platform it is now. Third-party platforms and social media channels will come and go, but an own-able URL endures.
The other big reason for wanting a website is that I wanted a space to make regular, more digestible posts. Not everything has to be 3,000 words that leaves many of you dear readers in existential puddles at the end of it. Brevity is good, too. Offering passing observations about the smaller, more delicate things at the confluence of adoption / poetry / pop culture is just as worthwhile as epic tomes about the larger, heavier narratives.
All of the writers in the audience will know that that kind of consistency, that kind of commitment, creating that kind of clearing in the woods of your life’s schedule is terrifying. Can I really do this? Can I start a blog and do more than post twice and let it collect cobwebs for the next hundred years?
So, four years, several therapy sessions (hi, Chris!), a kick in the butt from Steven Pressfield, and lots of help from a couple friends (hi, Trais! hi, Ingrid!), and trevorsides.com is now a real, living website. You can read the first post here. Wow! There it is! It’s so cute and short! Go read it!
What’s next
Some of you may be wondering how the website and the newsletter will work together. Well, let me tell you. As I explain on the About page, the initial plan is to share a new post once a week, on Wednesdays. (Go ahead, I’ll wait while you add a recurring event to your Google calendar.) At the end of each month, I’ll send a “recap” email, where I link to all the posts from that month, likely with some other goodies included. Because I like you.
As for the thousand-word dispatches, I am tentatively looking at continuing those on a quarterly basis or as need arises. Life is like a box of chocolate, and you never know how many words you’ll need to tell about it.
How you can help
First, as Taking Back Sunday would say, tell all your friends. If these letters have meant something to you, I’d humbly ask you to share with others. Maybe you know someone who is a foster or adoptive parent. Maybe you know someone who just likes to cry. Whoever comes to mind, it’d mean a great deal to me if you shared the site and/or the newsletter.
Secondly, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Running a website incurs some overhead, and these subscriptions will help cover those costs. More importantly, though, the content industry is in a tizzy figuring out how to share all the stuff while remaining operational. Right now, it’s either smother your site in ads like cheap green chile at a diner, or make your subscribers pay for the content. Of these two options, the second one is the more straight-forward path, and makes logical sense on many levels.
But I think there’s a third way: the patronage model. I have no plans to put up a paywall on my newsletter or my site. I want friends and fans and patrons, not “customers.” I want the content on my site and newsletter to be public, open and edifying to all, regardless of subscription status. But if you value this work, and if you are able and willing to support this work, I will humbly and gratefully accept that support.