Bret Devereaux

I realized that yesterday (3/13) was the one-year anniversary of my patreon, which turned out to be a bigger decision than I thought at the time. It is my own personal COVID anniversary, in its own odd way. Friends and readers had been asking about that sort of thing...

...for a while but I had resisted doing it because I was worried how it would look from a hiring committee's perspective. Then in roughly the space of a month, the TT search I was a finalist for went for another candidate, followed by COVID and the spring job market froze over.

That removed both my major objection - I was fairly sure that there wouldn't be many/any jobs available in fall2020 - and provided the final impetus to set it up, as one by one the spring searches got called off and I couldn't be sure I'd have teaching for the 2020/1 year.

(In the event, I got frankly lucky and a university in my area did have a teaching need I could fill but that was raw luck and I know it. Many more talented than me have not been so lucky) Nevertheless, march 2020 was a pretty low point in my academic adventure, to be honest.

I thought when I started it I should be very well pleased to have 30 or so patrons who might cover some academic expenses (journals, society memberships, conference fees, book purchases, etc). As I write this, I have 602 patrons. Y'all are nuts and I can't thank you enough.

That support has enabled me to move forward with confidence, knowing that I can still write, publish, engage the public and generally do history full time, regardless of the job situation. In the event, I do expect to be teaching in the fall (short-term adjunct position)...

...and a permanent academic job remains the dream of my heart (how does one list a patreon on a CV? under 'grants and awards'? Questions for later...). Such things seem unlikely now, but then if you had told me I'd have 600 patrons, that'd have seemed outlandish too.