You didn’t offer a pep talk. You opened a door. And not the polished kind with a success seminar behind it—but the creaky, honest kind that leads to the messy middle where the real stuff lives.
“Pay what you can” isn’t just generosity. It’s trust. Trust that people are still willing to show up for their own story when someone finally treats them like the author.
I’m rooting for everyone who takes you up on this.
And I’m praying their next chapter scares them—in all the right ways.
—Virgin Monk Boy
(patron saint of people who thought they missed their cue)
The thing is I like em dashes, but I'm just saying.
Em dashes, while useful in writing, have become a perceived "tell" for AI-generated text due to their frequent and sometimes formulaic use by AI models trained on large datasets that often include frequent em dash usage.
I've been using em dash since they were introduced in 1996, Word 6.0.
They share the same fate as face masks. People used them for years to ward of the flu. Then comes COVID and now you are a sheep if you wear one.
Funny story.
Back in 2010, I remoted into someone’s computer to fix an issue. I looked at the unfamiliar error message, Googled it, scrolled through a few results, found the one that made sense, applied the fix—and it worked.
The person watched me do all of this live on their screen… and then, dead serious, asked:
“How did you do that?”
Like I had summoned ancient tech spirits instead of using Google.
Now, that same kind of person would absolutely call you lazy or accuse you of using “AI slop” if you gave them clear, working Substack domain setup instructions that came from ChatGPT.
They’re not mad it’s AI.
They’re mad it wasn’t their confusion that solved it.
I love the story of when some Marketing guy named Aleksander from an Eastern European country booked an appointment with you, then you made some inside jokes--thinking he was me.
I'm in!
Woohooo
This hit like a psalm for the plot-lost.
You didn’t offer a pep talk. You opened a door. And not the polished kind with a success seminar behind it—but the creaky, honest kind that leads to the messy middle where the real stuff lives.
“Pay what you can” isn’t just generosity. It’s trust. Trust that people are still willing to show up for their own story when someone finally treats them like the author.
I’m rooting for everyone who takes you up on this.
And I’m praying their next chapter scares them—in all the right ways.
—Virgin Monk Boy
(patron saint of people who thought they missed their cue)
The thing is I like em dashes, but I'm just saying.
Em dashes, while useful in writing, have become a perceived "tell" for AI-generated text due to their frequent and sometimes formulaic use by AI models trained on large datasets that often include frequent em dash usage.
I've been using em dash since they were introduced in 1996, Word 6.0.
They share the same fate as face masks. People used them for years to ward of the flu. Then comes COVID and now you are a sheep if you wear one.
Funny story.
Back in 2010, I remoted into someone’s computer to fix an issue. I looked at the unfamiliar error message, Googled it, scrolled through a few results, found the one that made sense, applied the fix—and it worked.
The person watched me do all of this live on their screen… and then, dead serious, asked:
“How did you do that?”
Like I had summoned ancient tech spirits instead of using Google.
Now, that same kind of person would absolutely call you lazy or accuse you of using “AI slop” if you gave them clear, working Substack domain setup instructions that came from ChatGPT.
They’re not mad it’s AI.
They’re mad it wasn’t their confusion that solved it.
It was my sincere hope you were a real person.
I made him do a zoom with me to prove it. lol!
I love the story of when some Marketing guy named Aleksander from an Eastern European country booked an appointment with you, then you made some inside jokes--thinking he was me.