Two years ago, when I was wrapping up a session with a successful, talented young man who had come to me for astrology work, he said, "Your web page reminds me of a Porsche with the keys left in it."

That was an image I could see. I trusted this man's opinion on both journalism and money, and was for the first time compelled to reflect on the nature of that particular reality. He was not a commercial dude, either. He was independently wealthy, in his 20s, and was at the time enjoying a fully optional, and thriving, and high-energy career in public radio.

Planet Waves had been on the air as such since 1998, and in other incarnations continuously since 1995. In the world of ads with ads in them and of fees for the privilege of paying fees, the whole Planet Waves project was both free and advertising free. I loved it that way: I always had that subtle feeling of being a small-scale revolutionary against capitalism, and there was a lot of resonance in the community for such a critter. But my client's comment convinced me to begin making some changes, so in August of 2002, I took a one month break from the weekly horoscope and set about the conversion of Planet Waves to a partial-subscription service.

One commitment in becoming a subscriber-supported service was that the web page would get better once I was selling the subscription service. Another was that we would turn away nobody for lack of funds. The third was that my writing would begin to nourish me in those basic material ways we all count on. And, for those of you who recall, your subscription fee was only supposed to be for a once-a-week horoscope and a little tiny birthday report; it has become a much more complex and valuable service as time has gone on: now twice weekly at least, at times much more, and many of the essays you get are in fact book chapters. Hmmm. All for a dollar or two per week, the cost of a flavoring at Starbucks.

When the news that Planet Waves would be charging a fee for some of its services got around, I received some of those letters from people telling me I was selling out, but none included falafel. Mostly, I received subscription payments and letters from people who said they were thrilled that I was taking care of myself; that what I was writing every week was fully worth the subscription fee. Thanks to a lot of support, encouragement and honest reflection, I now fully agree -- but getting from there to here has been one of those self-esteem journeys. You know what I mean?

The result has been that Planet Waves has only grown into its mission that much better. Suddenly there was an office budget and the Internet bill was paid. Suddenly we could do a lot of things that were never possible, and all basic responsible business practices. And in the end, I was granted more time to write. And the more we grow, the more this process continues. Every subscription dollar goes into providing you this service. In a world where "money is everything" this 100% return on your investment is extremely rare. But for me as a writer, the amazing lesson was that the value of my writing could enhance my life and my work. I was really able to breathe a big sigh of relief.

Here's an interesting fact I've been meditating on since coming back to Europe (where I wrote the first Planet Waves essays on Rob Brezny's web page the summer of 1998, and then began the weekly horoscope). When I arrived here the last time around in March 1998, my total writing income was $2 per day. Okay, $2.25 in a 31-day month; the Planet Waves column had one magazine that published it, and my total fee was $70 per month.

"And you were so happy when it came," my friend Maria, who paid my way that summer as we explored Germany, recently reminded me. I was. One can never drag enough exotic, small press astrology books around in one's backpack. And salads are always nice.

Skip ahead to last night, after dinner in a cafe with another of my most successful clients, who is working on location in Amsterdam and took me out to a fine Tibetan dinner last night. She asked me how I got this thing started, the web page and all, and I told her the story of buying an ephemeris (at Esoterica Books in New Paltz) in 1994 to figure out how Patric Walker wrote his column, and then beginning my own column about a year later. (She gave me that 'Oh really?' look, in Technicolor.) And onward and upward one project at a time, one horoscope at a time, one leaflet at a time, one little cool or pathetic gig at a time, one meeting with an editor at a time insisting on getting paid, leading up to last night when it was all good for a laugh. She told me the story of being on location in South Africa and printing out my monthly horoscopes and distributing them to the people on her staff, years before she ever came to me for a chart reading. Then she said something that pretty well floored me.

"I couldn't have done it."

She couldn't have done it? Here is a woman who I admire with what I can honestly call reverence for her capacity to make things happen and take care of herself, and really make her job fun for herself and her staff. The companies she works for value her as a prized business asset for her excellence and integrity. And here she is telling me she wouldn't have had the persistence to overcome all the endless obstacles on the way to starting something from nothing and actually make it happen. Reality checkpoint.

These and many other votes of confidence have slowly convinced me to see my work for what it is, even though it really does feel like a pretty modest accomplishment overall. These votes come every day from the people without whom this project would be about impossible, and without whom my life would be a lot less fun: Chelsea Bottinelli, who you know as the person who answers Planet Waves phone lines and emails, and who I know as a beloved sister; Tracy Delaney, this mysterious Welsh woman up in Liverpool who showed up a few years ago -- she programs the web page and makes sure that my columns are presentable, and is a research demon, and great friend and constant workmate; and Pam Purdy, who is keeping track of things in Seattle after I suddenly left there this Spring, who meticulously archives my columns and feeds my fish, and whose friendship is a beautiful lesson in love and devotion.

They are results-oriented people and the main result is that I am beginning to feel safe on this planet.

There are so many people who have helped create Planet Waves, motivated by love, art and justice (and the occasional modest paycheck or PlanetWaves email account) over the years that I can barely name them all, but I'll name a few: Jeanne Treadway, Jenny Singer, Chris Grosso, Maya Dexter, Cassia Landacre, Elle McKenzie, Jordan Laughlin, Jay Wade the Mac Guy, and the artist usually known as Via Keller. This is a truly original bunch of first-class freaks, and many have become very close friends with one another as the years have unwound.

Then of course there is this guy up in York called Jonathan Cainer, who has introduced me to, and entrusted me with, millions of his readers, over and over and over again. (Yes, I was sitting in a state verging on shock the first time I wrote his column as a stand-in in 2002, right before creating the subscriber service.) And then there are all the amazing people who work with and for him who, like I am, are happy to contribute our energy to his successful, high-vibration projects.

There are the clients who pause the program at the beginning of astrology sessions to take five minutes and tell me how helpful my writing has been, and I thank them from my heart but I really thank God and the gods for making it possible, and letting the connection happen.

And then there's you. My subscribers are the people who literally underwrite my writing; whose votes add up to my actually being able to create my columns every week, which requires (in the words of Joe Trusso, this Gestalt therapist who looked after my sanity for a while, when it counted) "a roof over your head and sandwich in your hand." (And a DSL connection.) The subscriptions come in, the renewals come in at well above the industry standard, and there are the little gifts and supporting memberships and referrals to friends and people who forward the newsletter all over creation. There is the subscriber who's connected me with two national horoscope gigs in the U.S., just because she could. There's the subscriber who knew of this little apartment in Paris that I stayed in, and so on and on.

I get this feeling as I show up in new cities thousands of miles from anywhere I've ever called home that my work has made its way around the world, and the energy I've put out, and the message that it's okay to be yourself, is coming back to me.

We live in a time when being yourself is about the scariest thing you can endeavor, but fortunately that's becoming less and less of a big deal as everything else seems to be even more scary, particularly all the fear and lies we're being soaked in via the corporate media that is selling one product, consumption itself. I have no pretenses of PlanetWaves being anything more than a viewpoint, but it feels very good to put that viewpoint out into the world in a time when the purpose of most journalism is to shock people into a stupor of paralysis and buying more.

One reason putting the horoscope and newsletter on the market to subscribers was scary was because, while I had next to no income from years of writing Planet Waves, I was free to be naked on the page. For a long time that seemed a fair exchange, but I now see that it was a false dilemma. Putting a cash value on something came with the thought, conscious or not, that people would no longer subscribe if they don't like what I think. For many publications, this is how they become entirely an ad, since every word is considered in light of whether it's going to piss somebody off. I have, I think, continued to be a fairly bold writer -- though one could always be bolder, and what's in my notebooks will slowly make its way into the newsletter. And you have continued to be a bold reader, considering views that you may not agree with at all, accepting the fact that I change every day, and taking this adventure along with me.

The thing is this. We have to keep living in the face of all the insane fear that's being thrown at us and pumped into us, and to which so many people are addicted. Life is none the longer for all the bad vibes we're bashed with every day. The fear ranges from lurking dread of abstractions to people being carefully cultivated into stark paranoia, contempt and misunderstanding of one another. This fear is nothing more or less than an addiction, but the addiction was forced on us in the first place. Speaking particularly of American society, it is difficult to see how intolerant it is of different viewpoints until you actually look at it from a distance.

If Planet Waves has one message for us all, it's YES.

Please pass it on.

Thank you, truly.

Yours,

Eric Francis Coppolino
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Aug. 6, 2004