Being an Email Subscriber Butterfly Gives Me Inbox Peace — Please Don’t Take It Personally

Permission to unsubscribe granted and encouraged

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

I claim the right to invite your newsletter into my inbox for a time, and to bar the door when my plate is full.

I claim the right to pay for one month of access to your paid offering, then keep next month’s payment in my account, or move it to another newsletter, according to my whims, taste, and attention constraints. This is not a commentary on the quality or validity of your work.

Okay, to be honest, it totally could be. But I don’t intentionally subscribe to poor quality stuff in the first place, so you’re probably safe on that count.

Some months I gain a few new subscribers to my stories, and every month I lose a few. I’m oddly pleased about this in a pleasantly detached way, because unless they’ve left the platform, it means people are curating their inboxes. They’re being intentional with the contents of their digital containers and with their time. Because I post the same material on both Medium and Substack, it makes sense not to subscribe to duplicates.

Subscribing to someone’s work means you believe it’s worth one more thing to process when it’s time to look at your email inbox. Sometimes subscribing is the only way to find out if it’ll be worth it or not! That’s how I do it. If a regular inbox item becomes a chore rather than something I look forward to, I’m on that unsubscribe button faster than my brain can process the thought.

I encourage you to freely support the creators whose work you enjoy with whatever means their chosen platform provides that work for you. I also encourage you to unsubscribe from communications that are either currently irrelevant, or too much in one way or another.

Do These 8 Things Before Emailing Your Subscriber List
#1: Who are you, again, and why should I care?miscellaneplans.medium.com

What I write is not a good fit for some, and not all of what I write is a good fit for people who like most of it. Peace, brother! Namaste, sister! Friend, I salute you! May your journey be one of serenity, uncluttered by superfluous mail in both your physical and digital inboxes.

My door is always open for travellers in both directions, and I hope to find the same unfettered freedom to come and go as my butterfly brain decides, into or out of your creative abode.

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