“I grew up really appreciating a curated journey.”
– Young pop star, “Weekend Morning Edition,” NPR, 23 October 2021
It was fourteen years ago today that I began my own “curated journey” in blogging. For my first post, I translated this little gem of paradoxical “geopolitical” thought by the artist and writer Pavel Pepperstein.
Since that day, there have been 2,945 more entries (including this one) on this website, a very long detour on Chtodelat News, which I edited and almost completely wrote for over five years, generating another 793 posts in the process, and Living in FIN, a place for my occasional forays into Finnish poetry and South Karelian living, where I’ve made an even 200 scratch marks on the wall so far. So quite soon, maybe this year even, I will have reached out to the wide world 3,000 times in this peculiar roundabout way.
Knowing that these anniversaries were around the corner, I’ve been making speeches in my head, some more structured and constructive, others more grandiloquent and sentimental. But now that one of these anniversaries has actually dawned, I don’t feel like preaching to the choir. If you’re already here, it means you get it, whatever “it” is.
That means you might want me to keep making this website. How can you help me do that?
1. Ensure a steady flow of new “Russian readers” by getting the word out via social media. Every time any of you reposts what I write here, I immediately see the number of readers double, triple, quadruple and so forth. Last year, for whatever reason, you and I were grooving on the same inner plane more often than not, and I had nearly 175,000 views at the end of it. This year, though, the reposting — and thus the influx of new readers — has seemingly dried up, so I’ll be lucky to reach a third of last year’s encouraging audience numbers.
2. Donate money to me via PayPal or Ko-Fi. In addition to paying for hosting, internet and subscriptions to the Russian independent media I read and share here in translation, I would like to be able to pay the occasional guest translator a fee as well. And, if there is money left over, even pay myself a bit. Making this website, especially the translating, is a lot of work.
3. Follow me on social media (Facebook, Telegram, Twitter, Ello, Tumblr) and repost those heads-up whenever you can, thus getting more folks hooked on this funny website and letting me know that what I do here has value for more than just me and a few other people.
Thanks for your support!
Photo and text by the Russian Reader
The Russian Reader 