I was planning on writing a poem this evening, but all I’ve got coming up right now is sheer gratitude for the kind of life I get to live because of the generous support of my patrons and the circulation of my work by my readers. I think prose will be my partner for this one.

People have really been so good to me. I got to spend this morning writing about how it’s bullshit for people to claim that Julian Assange is not a journalist, which is just something I badly wanted to say. And people thanked me for it. How crazy is that?

I’m really wild about this job, and I’m appreciating it more and more lately. I love that I get to spend all day thinking deep thoughts about our world’s ills and then making word sculptures expressing them. I love that I get to keep my mind pointed at the fundamental struggle and let inspiration come up with new ways of addressing it every day.

I don’t really understand all the forces that have been in play in taking me to this point. Ideas bubble up from source unknown, people show up from the most unexpected places to help and uplift me, perfect strangers defend me when I’m being smeared and subverted, and money comes in so I can pay my bills while staying focused on this ongoing project. Whatever has caused this truckload of miracles to show up on my doorstep every morning, I am deeply grateful for it. This job has been very strange and scary at times, but there’s nothing in this world that I’d rather be doing.

So thank you. Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for the financial support, thank you for sharing my work around online, thank you for spreading the word of mouth, thank you for the likes, the retweets, the comments, the feedback, and thank you for taking the ideas I’ve been putting out there and coming to your own thoughts and insights off of them. All of these things help immensely. I deeply care about this work, and it means so much to me that there’s been such a tsunami of collaborators participating in it.

The freedom that comes with being completely reader-supported enables me to attack the machine in ways I’d never be able to get away with in any other writing gig. Having to go through editors who don’t always understand what I’m going for or who will chicken out when I want to say something controversial that needs to be said would have severely hobbled this work, and being able to skip the editorial approval process altogether enables me to interact with events as they come up quickly and in real time. I promise to always use this freedom for the greater good, and I will never under any circumstances accept money from anyone paying me to change the way I talk about anything (if I was going to that I might as well whore myself out to the MSM).

I’ve learned so much on this journey, and I’m getting better and better at doing this thing. I promise to keep improving and keep finding the most effective ways possible to keep throwing scrap metal into the gears of the oppression machine. Thank you all so much for coming along on this weird and wonderful adventure with me. It’s only going to keep getting better. This is just getting started. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

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I recognize no copyright of any kind on this work. You have my unconditional permission to republish it or use any part of it in any way you like, or any of my other writings. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish.

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