Oops, I Got Distracted By Starting A Patreon Diary

Well hello there. Been a while, hasn’t it? Don’t you worry, this isn’t like those Other Times I have started a blog and then abandoned it a month later, oh no. I have still been thinking about this blog regularly! And I am still committed to telling stories from places I’ve been, sharing photos, and rambling on about film photography.

So what has stopped me from writing? Have I become very busy? Have I gotten a new job? Have the classes I’ve been taking become very difficult and started consuming all of my time? Have I been going on exciting travels, leaving me with no time to write about them?

None of the above, actually. What happened is… I started a photo diary on Patreon.

If you haven’t heard of it, Patreon is a platform where you can support a creator in making work that you like. You might have heard it plugged on your favorite podcast, by an illustrator you like, or maybe even from an athlete you admire. You basically subscribe to a person’s Patreon feed, giving you exclusive content that they make. In my case, you can pay $1 a month to read my daily photo diary entries! (You can also subscribe for a slightly higher amount if you want other cool rewards).

Some artists use Patreon as a place for their fans/friends/family to subscribe to diary comics (I follow(ed) the now-stopped one by Tillie Walden, and the ongoing ones by Laura Knetzger and MariNaomi). That’s basically what I’m doing, except it’s more like a daily photo + diary entry + usually a sketch. A bit of a stretch of the term “comic”, so I call it a photo-journal.

For the last while, my Patreon diary has satisfied my desire for telling stories from my life, which is why this blog was in danger of getting abandoned. But after doing it for a while (over 40 days now!) I’ve realized that there are a lot of photos and stories that aren’t going to be well-represented in a daily diary, just like there are a lot of photos and stories that wouldn’t be well-represented by a nice, polished blog like I’m hoping Particle Trails will become. So I think the two will complement each other.

I’ll also be posting seasonal snippets from the Patreon diary here. So here’s your first preview!

And there you have it! Are you dying to fill in the gaps? You can read all of the October posts for free, and if you want to read everything I’ve written so far (AND get an email every day with a new pretty photo and diary entry), consider becoming a patron!

I, really, truly, am thankful for every patron I have. I was so touched that a couple of friends subscribed right away, and it’s the main thing that kept me motivated to keep writing the diary, knowing it was meaningful enough to a couple of people that they wanted to subscribe to read it. It’s been a really fun experience!