For a little while I kinda split the difference. Early in my tech news writing career, I started pronouncing my last name as the French version.

I fenced in high school and we did well enough to go to a national competition, so they brought in fancy refs from France. For the first time in my suburban upbringing I heard an actual French person pronounce my last name over the auditorium speakers and it was the coolest frigign thing I’d ever heard.

So once I started doing interviews and getting on podcasts in the early days of my writing career, I pronounced my last name that way to try and distance myself from my family without going through a legal hullabaloo.

I eventually I realized it was a bit disingenuous since I hadn’t spent the time to learn anything about my French heritage, which I was already quite removed from anyway. I dropped it and went back to what was surely the Ellis Island pronunciation I grew up with.

Totally. Whole businesses have sprung up for running and monetizing them. Check into Ghost, WordPress and WooCommerce, Memberful. Lots of other options.

People saying “blog” when they mean post. You did not write a new blog on your blog, you wrote a new post on your blog.

You do not drive your car on the car. You drive your car on the road.

One tip would be to use email addresses that you actually check for mission critical accounts.

I have a few hundred feeds across topics that I’ve collected over the years, but I’m gonna guess you don’t want to see my entire OPML. Want to share some topics you’re into? That should help recommendations a lot

Also, a general tip: Most decent feed readers can sniff out a feed if you paste a website into their search box. Next time you’re surfing the regular web and find a site you like, try tossing it into your reader to follow it from then on