Yesterday, we stumbled on Seth Godin’s question “What if you stopped?“, and….

…we did stop for a minute to think about it.

What if we stopped publishing Improvised Life? 

What would happen to your audience if you shut the doors tomorrow? ...

What would happen to your customers and to your prospects if you stopped doing your work?

If you stopped showing up, if you stopped selling them something, would they miss you if you were gone?

If the airline went away, we’d just find another airline. If the cookie cutter politician went away, we’d just vote for someone else. If the typical life insurance agent…

Does it matter if it’s you doing the work?

What If?

Judging from the emails we get, we know that a good number of people would miss us. We hear daily that Improvised Life is an essential reminder to practice thinking differently, that it has helped many readers shift how they view aspects of their lives, especially the difficult ones. We also know that we are not for everyone. And that the “market” will determine how long, and in what form, we continue. Nothing is for “always”.

Although we LOVE making Improvised Life, we live with the possibility of not publishing  because of the financial realities of keeping going. To live, we need both $$ AND to grow our readership.

Holton Rower
Holton Rower

Want Improvised Life to keep publishing? There are many ways to help (some of them may surprise you):

Become a member if you aren’t yet one, OR renew your subscription.

—GIFT a subscription to a friend or two. It’s easy to do. Simply click here or the ‘Gift Improvised Life’ box on the sidebar. 

—Pass on articles you read to people who may not know about us, via email, Twitter or your own Facebook.

—Like our Improvised Life’s Facebook page (you don’t have to be a member of FB to do it). 

—Sign up for our daily email.

AND…

…please keep letting us know what you think, want, don’t like, love…

 

With thanks to our awesome community,

Sally and Improvised Life

 

If you’ve found illumination, joy, or inspiration in this post, please consider supporting Improvised Life. It only takes a minute to make a secure donation that helps pay our many costs. A little goes a long way towards helping Improvised Life continue to live ad-free in the world.

Support Improvised Life ♥

8 replies on “What if We Stopped?

  1. Answer: someone else would fill the spot. You are NOT indispensible.

    By the way, I don’t like your destruction of the beautiful lillies with a black marker.
    What was the point?

    This is a silly post, ill chosen.

  2. Yep, I agree. Improvised Life is not indispensable. Life would certainly go on.

    And I agree too that the post may have been hamhanded. The big reality is that Improvised Life is a great deal of work which can only go on with support from its community. That support can be various; it is not just financial. IL is a rather fragile ecosystem, like the lilies.

    I did not write on the lilies. It is an image by designer Stefan Sagmeister from his show about happiness. Had he not written on them, they would still have died, as all things do. I believe that is the image’s message.

  3. Sally, if you decided to stop publishing Improvised Life it would have a *huge* impact on my life. I would miss it terribly, and I don’t think anyone else could or would do it–certainly not in the way you do and the way that means so much to me.

    I am truly sorry that subscriptions are not going as well as you (and to be honest, I) had hoped. I will step up. I will renew my subscription and I will add additional money to the minimum. I will also give it as a gift to one or two people I know who will also love it as I do. These will be done when I get home tonight or tomorrow night.

    Please know that for me Improvised Life is an amazing and unique gift. Each post you make always stuns me with its beauty, its insights, and its … well, amazingness. I hope people respond as positively as you always share with us.

    With all my best wishes,

    Lauren

  4. I can’t thank you enough for your very kind words. If only they were the only kind of fuel Improvised Life needed to live on; then it would be golden. Your words, understanding and support are immensely heartening, and truly go a long way.

    Improvised Life is an experiment to see if something like this can live in the world ALONG with products we are developing to add ballast. But it all takes time, energy and $$.

    All by way of saying, thank you, deeply.

  5. I would miss my daily “contact” with you. I wish you made oodles of $$ from this hard work…

  6. PLEASE don’t stop writing the improvisedlife!!!!!!!

    P L E A S E……..

    Virginia from Argentina, feeling closer to the World thanks to you!

  7. My love letter to *improvised life*

    Yes, there would be other blogs to read, but in a web of sameness, *improvised life* is unique.
    Your posts impact me daily in various and often unexpected ways; you make me consider or reconsider, agree vociferously, disagree vehemently, feel happy, feel amazed, delighted, entertained, expanded, gladdened at the human race (so much else makes me saddened at the human race). I never know what is coming (you keep us on our toes) but whatever comes, it seems to come from a place that speaks to me, sometimes loudly, sometimes in a whisper, always welcomed.

    So, dear *improvised life,* thank you for contributing your unique voice to the wild, vast (and sometimes very rude) internets – you make it a better place, and as I see it, that’s no small feat.

    With appreciation,
    Catbird Farm

    PS> I never thought of giving a subscription as a gift, so once again you make me consider. I have a couple of recipients in mind.

  8. Oh my….After waking up to a rather shocking email, the day has been rich with heartening and very generous notes, via Comments and emails, as well as Tinypass subscriptions. Thank you all so much. 11:51 pm, and this blogger is going to end this day with gratitude.

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