Reader feedback, please!
Help me make Our Long Walk even better
I know I already encroach on your inbox twice a week. But could I ask for another ten minutes of your time?
I’ve put together a short, fourteen-question survey on Google Forms, and I would love it if you – the more than 5,000 readers of Our Long Walk – were willing to complete it. To sweeten the deal, five respondents will each receive a paid subscription for a year (valued at $75). Christmas gift, sorted.
Why the survey? Because I’d like to keep writing Our Long Walk for many years, but I also want to make sure it is genuinely useful, enjoyable, and worth your time. I’d like to know what you enjoyed most this year and where you think I should do more (or less). What topics would you like to see covered? What would make this community better for you?
You can fill in the survey here.
Asking you for feedback is only fair if I also say thank you.
Thank you to everyone who has written with comments, disagreements, suggested readings, or simply a line of encouragement. To those who have shared posts with friends and colleagues, liked or commented on Substack, forwarded an email, or invited me to give a talk: you’ve helped turn Our Long Walk from a solitary writing project into a real community.
A special word of thanks to Kelsey Lemon, who has provided incredible support over the last year – much of what you see on Our Long Walk runs more smoothly because of her work behind the scenes.
I am also deeply grateful to the Millennium Trust, which supports my research chair. Their funding buys me the most precious resource any scholar has: time. Our Long Walk exists in its current form because of that support.
Then there are the Our Long Walk ‘guides’ – a small Whatsapp group of readers I regularly bother with drafts of unpublished posts. Your critical comments, questions and occasional blunt “this doesn’t work” have made many pieces far better than their first versions.
And finally, a big thank you to all paid subscribers. Your support makes much of this possible: from the prize money for the Our Long Walk essay competition to the ads I buy to introduce posts to new readers and new regions. I know there are many other ways to spend your time and money, and I am genuinely grateful that you have chosen to invest some of both in this work.
I’ll be taking a short break from 19 December and will be back in your inbox from 5 January, rested and ready for a new year of stories. Wherever you are reading this, I wish you and your loved ones a very merry Christmas and a peaceful, hopeful 2026. Let’s keep on walking the long road to economic freedom…
(Now, don’t forget the survey!)
‘Reader feedback, please!’ was first published on Our Long Walk. The images were created with Midjourney v7.