I’m still periodically getting emails from people asking me if I’ll run paid content for them. I got another one a couple days ago, and only just now got around to deleting it because I was too busy shoveling out from under the blizzard of computer problems I’ve been having the last few days.

As a general reminder, I do not now and will not ever be running such content on this site or any other site I maintain. I consider it spamful. If you’re here reading me, I’m going to assume it’s because you want to know about my books, with a possible side helping of stuff I find interesting (what I’m reading, Quebec music, computer geekery, etc.). I’m not going to inflict completely other random topics on you.

I’m actually bothering to post about this less because of the email itself, and more because I caught myself trying to figure out how to politely reply to it before I realized, hey, I am not obligated to answer this person.

Our society places a lot of value on “networking”, and for women, there’s the added pressure of expectation to be polite, be civil, be “nice”. Here I am well and thoroughly into my middle age, and I still can reflexively react to those expectations.

It’s very liberating to remind myself that this is not necessary.

Because if someone’s managed to find my email, chances are that they got it right off this site, since I do have information publicly posted about how to contact me.

And if they found my site, yet didn’t bother to actually read it–and in particular the Policies page where I explicitly state that I will not run ads or sponsored content–then they clearly have no actual interest in me, my posts, or my readers.

Therefore I have no interest in their emails. And as per my explicitly posted policy, that last email has been deleted without a reply.