Thursday Notes: #21
2018’s Last Thursday
Surprise! Well, I’m surprised, anyway; I’d been sure I was going to take this week off from newsletter-sending.
But here I am! Mostly because I wanted to tell you about the new fun thing I’m doing: little personal essays on Medium.
Here [in the original newsletter, not here, my apologies] is an unrelated picture of a pretty S, because apparently learning a new website isn’t enough to do; I’m also fiddling with a different newsletter tool. I’m finding it a bit frustrating, but I’m not going to let a mere piece of software defeat me!
I don’t even remember how Medium came to my attention, exactly; I know I’ve seen people link to articles from it, but I didn’t understand what it was about until a few days ago. It’s really just a place to go and read stuff, and, if you want to, to write stuff. All with no ads. You can sign up for free, or you can “upgrade” for $50, which I did almost immediately, because it’s SUCH a good reading experience. Did I mention NO ADS? Heh, sorry to sound like an ad for Medium here (!), but I don’t think I realized how exhausting and kind of soul-killing it is to read basically anything anywhere on the internet while having to wade through a barrage of pop-ups, videos, scrolling ads, etc etc.
So I already find I’m spending less time on Facebook and more time at Medium, reading interesting little essays and articles. When the whole reason I signed up was because of the writing-side of it.
Here’s another unrelated image, of Mark rolling out ravioli dough for Christmas Eve dinner. It took me seven tries to get the photo to come in right-side up. Nevertheless I persisted! The ravioli was delicious, too.
So, the writing: here’s the thing. It’s super easy to use (unlike this stupid newsletter software!). You just…open a little file and start writing. You give it a title. You add a picture if you want to, or more than one (and the picture comes in right-side up!). Then you post it.
Then people read it, and they can “clap” if they like it, and eventually, after some convoluted process that I don’t understand yet, maybe you get a little money.
Honestly, though money is great, and we can always use more of it, I find I’m not caring so much about that part. I’m just SO LOVING WRITING THE LITTLE ESSAYS. I’ve written three so far, and my brain is already wandering around analyzing the moments of my day and trying to fit them into little personal essays, whether they belong there or not. “What is it about sleeping, anyway? How is it that I can be soooo tired and then turn off the light and then my brain goes HEY, time to start fretting!” Or “An annotated, ranked list of our Christmas dinner, from Most to Least Delicious, parsed by effort involved.” Or “Dear Houseguest, here are the things you need to know about staying here in our eccentric home in the woods…”
Wait, hang on, maybe I do want to write that one.
Here are the three essays I’ve posted so far. I’ll give you the “friends” links here so you don’t have to sign up or subscribe or anything. Even though I totally think you should because it’s great.
This is a humorous story about Christmas letters.
And this one is about being an introvert, and it isn’t really humorous, exactly. Not sure what happened there, but hey.
All right, that’s it for this week–and this year! Time to go water the orchids, and then (no doubt) rush off to Medium to write a short humorous piece about orchids.
Or herons.
Or Christmas cookies.
Or houseguests.
Or…