August Housekeeping

I need your input!

6 months of silence and then TWO Baby Steppes in one day!? Nay, this one is simply some updates/things I want to get sorted before I move to China in less than a week. It’s all pretty time-sensitive, so take a minute to skim this letter real quick!

UPCOMING LETTERS

I am aware that my letter this morning was long and, perhaps, a bit of a downer.

“honestly I was tearing up at work a bit reading the final one” - one of my proofreaders

“everything you share makes me feel An Emotion As Yet Undescribed.” - Sarah from my comment section

I am happy to announce that I have a couple of slightly shorter and significantly cheerier letters that I want to write up on my flight to Beijing this week: One about flying on Uzbek airlines, one about attending a rave in an abandoned Soviet bunker, and one about celebrating the one-year anniversary of my Ko’pkari incident by once again going to a remote mountainous area of Central Asia with a large herd of horses.

I’m hoping to get 2/3rds of these edited/published, so if you have any opinions on WHICH of the three I should prioritize, sound off in the comments.

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SNAIL MAIL

For my paid subscribers, I’m planning to send postcards out this weekend! Fill the form out by Friday night if you want one.

For those who do not know what I am talking about: I have a paid tier on my Substack that does not promise to regularly give you ANYTHING more than what you get for free.¹ It’s just that some people like to give me money because they like my writing, which I think is very cool. And in the past I’ve sent out some postcards and such to my paid subscribers, but again no promises about continuing to do that regularly.

Substack takes a cut off of the money I get from subscriptions, so lately I have been trying to find ways around that.² If you are interested in reading my paywalled letters/getting snail mail and don’t already have a subscription, here are alternative options:

• Recommend Baby Steppes, or write me a review.

If you’re someone who has their own Substack, and you write me a review that I want to feature, I’ll gift you a Baby Steppes subscription for as long as I have your review on my home page.

I also have a system in place where you can get free paid subscriber status by successfully recommending Baby Steppes to other people!

• Buy anything off my wishlist and let me know about it

I put out a tiktok a while ago offering to exchange Baby Steppes subscriptions for some second-hand goods I was hoping to get before moving to China (a backup phone, a field recorder, a couple of difficult-to-find books, etc) and people actually did it! Which I thought was really cool. A couple more people DMed me suggesting that I do the same thing with a wishlist of anything I still wanted.

Most of the items on this list are expensive, which is why they’re on my wishlist and not something I’ve already bought myself.

Time is very much running out before I leave for Beijing, so I’ll probably take the wishlist down in a couple of days. If you don’t see a link here, or the list is empty, that’s probably what has happened!

• Ask me

If you’re broke and really want to read my handful of locked letters, just shoot me a message! I’m not sending you snail mail, though.

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CHINA

I need to arrive in Beijing with a game plan for writing, so that I don’t forget about it. I would LOVE feedback on what y’all want to read/see, especially:

• Why did you originally subscribe to Baby Steppes?

• What kind of topics do you enjoy reading about?

• Do you want me to keep prioritizing writing about Central Asia, or would you be down for a pivot to Asia at large?

• How often do you want to read/listen to letters?

Thank you in advance for your feedback and hope y’all have a great night :)

1. I do have one, maybe two letters that I’ve put behind the paywall in the past because they deal with more sensitive topics and I want to be able to keep note of who has read them.

2. Because I am a conniving snake and always looking for a loophole.