A note of thanks and a brief update

An anniversary and a wedding...

When I started From The Forests of Arduinna on the Spring Equinox last year (20 March, 2021), I really had no idea it would become so popular.

I began it specifically because I needed a more open platform for my writing. Most of my longest essays had been published on the online journal of the publisher I run (Gods&Radicals Press/ Ritona), and some of them on my own Wordpress blog. Both were great places to write, but I noticed I’d become confined within a certain ideological framework that highly limited what I said. Opening this substack became a way for me to break out of that limiting framework and the expectations that came with it.

I still much of the same audience as before, though some of the most ideologically rigid American sorts have stopped reading me. That’s great, actually—I needed that. I needed to stop writing in a way that anticipated and mollified their critiques, especially a growing obsession with dogma and a fear of anything slightly heretical.

A significant part of that is a kind of competitive group think in subcultures which attacks anyone whose writing starts to attract and speak to readers outside of the subculture. I think this happens in any subculture, but it’s particularly crushing within leftist subcultures. A leftist who writes something that non-leftists might agree with is a traitor to leftism, or so it goes.

From The Forests of Arduinna has been my key to breaking out of this, and good gods has it been incredible. I never expected to be writing for such a large audience, nor did I imagine that the financial support from it would be so significant.

Then again, I also didn’t think the writing of a gay Marxist druid would ever be shared so widely by Christians, atheists, and self-described conservative people as well as by other leftists and pagans. Nor did I think my writing here would attract the attention of a leftist publisher with a book proposal for me.

It’s all been damn great, humbling, and also assuring.

Anyway, this is a huge thank you to all of you who’ve been reading, sharing, and financially supporting this work so far. Even though I rarely have time to reply to comments and emails, I read them all and am always deeply honored by your kind words and thoughtful critiques.

I’m looking forward to the second year of From The Forests of Arduinna, and I’m really glad you’re here!

(If you’re interested in becoming a paid supporter, here’s the button for that.)

Speaking of looking forward to things, I’m getting married next week. Friday, 18 March, 2022, to a really incredible man.

This is us just last week in the light of ancient pagan fires:

We’ve been together now a little over two years, and our wedding date was set on the anniversary of what we called “the best apocalypse ever.” COVID-19 restrictions were just about to shut down the entire country, and confinement here meant you couldn’t travel to meet anyone who you didn’t live with. So, though we’d only met each other less than 2 months before the lockdowns, he invited me to stay with him through it all.

Risky and reckless, of course, especially since we’d both sworn off relationships for awhile because of previous experiences. But it also sounded like an adventure, and so I rode my sister’s bike several hours through forests to his house.

I mean, why not?

And now, two years to the day of that bike ride, we’ll be married.

There’s a lot to do in the next week to get ready for it, and I’ve family and friends I haven’t seen for years soon visiting, and also some work projects to finish up, so I need to take a short hiatus from writing here, at least until after the wedding.

I’m sure you’ll understand. And don’t worry, it won’t be long, just until after equinox. Also, I’ll post some wedding photos for you as well.

I’ll see you all very, very soon. And thanks so much for your amazing support of my writing!