After a long time deliberating (~4 hours) I have decided to take the plunge. Several people I admire write these newsletters I enjoy, and while I don’t expect this one to end up in that rarefied air* I am someone who enjoys two things: making things, and having people look at the things I make.
And putting frameworks around the things and the making of them. Daily drawing challenges, a painting a week, a post a day, whatever, in the past I’ve found all these structures helpful** and what is Substack after all but another shelf you can arrange your thoughts on in a way that might make them seem artful and considered.
So here are the four things:
A painting. I call them paintings but really most of them are somewhere more on the “illustration” side of the spectrum I would say. If you’re reading this at all, this is probably the aspect you’re already most familiar with. Not much to say here except that what has been easy for me is to spend 20 minutes drawing something I like OK, and which I rarely revisit.
What has been harder is spending multiple hours on something I like more than OK. Hopefully a once-a-week structure will lend itself more to more in-depth pieces.
I started writing “poetry” sometime last year, I think around the time when things were really sinking in in unexpected ways, when things were catching fire that we expected to but were still dismayed by, and around the time I started drinking a lot more wine. I put poetry in quotes there because I’ve never previously been much of a poetry enjoyer, but I recently started reading a lot more of it, and again, the stuff I write I wouldn’t want to put in the same category as the stuff I read.
It is fun to write, though.
And having a place like this where I can share some of it without having to look any of you people in the eye, or adjust a microphone stand, or do a little cough and a half-smirk like “yeah I know, right” or put my phone under a bucket in another room after I work up the nerve to post something - well, who knows. I’m looking forward to it.I also went vegan last year, right before things started sinking in, when I was still doing the “hmm” face and the “what if I was this type of guy” face at all the wine bottles I passed on my way from the broccoli section to the crackers section. Like a lot of things it started as a half-joke. The other half was a test, or a challenge, or maybe a second look: am I the sort of person who could commit to doing something like this?
I expected to have given up by now, but actually, it’s easy and has been fun, and I am still vegan. Thank you. Yes, thanks, no, really, thank you so much. That’s so kind. Thank you.
I have been cooking a lot more because of it, and discovering a lot of fun things to cook. Thing Three every week therefore will be something I made to eat or drink - probably not an original recipe - and what I thought about it.Something else. Some kind of short essay, a story, a couple paragraphs about something I’ve been thinking about, probably nothing too topical, maybe something I read, maybe a picture.
Nothing too long! People are already doing long-form better than me I think.
I think this will be coming out on Tuesdays. So stay tuned for the first actual edition.
In the meantime, you can share it.
*Rarefied just means “Thin” like “Thin air.” So if someone’s up in “rarefied air” i think the implication is that they’re on a mountaintop (which is good, in this example) but equally possible is that they are suffering from oxygen deficiency
** “Helpful” in the sense that they make me think about making things in slightly different ways sometimes (but only sometimes.)