welcome aboard
welcome aboard
new projects, old plans, and weekly letters ~ 15/01/2023
it is 3:06 A.M, and I’ve decided to launch a new publication.
I mean, it’s under the same Substack, and I’ve auto-added all of you to the mailing list. And it’s still just me writing, about more or less the same things that I’m always writing about. And it all stays free.
There’s just going to be more of it.
You can stay subscribed to both if you like. You can unsubscribe to this one and still stay subscribed to BeWrong proper, where you will continue to receive the “serious” essays (I have some real bangers on the way). Or you could break my heart and leave for good because I’ve decided to sell out to the content mills. I respect that tbh.
I spent far too long thinking about whether this is a good idea. I’m at the point where I need (and want) to tell enough people about enough things to require something that looks more like a personal newsletter than a blog.
But I also think there’s far too many writers out there who do things like- hold up.
I had a couple hundred words there lamenting the state of writing on the internet. How almost everyone says the same things and how “curators” need to be shot and reading lists banned. How all you need to be reading wilder stuff instead of the takes that have been made a dozen times already. And what I think of the entire “young person’s guide to finding yourself” genre of internet writing that involves either TOO MANY CAPITAL LETTERS, or far too few.
But you don’t need to hear that.
All I needed to say was, that’s not for me. This will not be the “how to live your life” kind of newsletter, or the “here’s 5 links that made me think”. It’s just me opening my MacBook on the weekend and typing out a letter to you fine folk. The only rule is that I have to keep going until I hit a thousand words.
Sometimes there will be links, sometimes there will be music, sometimes there will be relatively dry explorations of software economics. Sometimes I will summarise and talk about a few papers I happen to be reading. Occasionally, I might slip in an essay draft or two as a teaser. Or a mini-manifesto, if the mood is upon me.
Why?
i need to write more
This is not entirely true, I spend most of my waking hours writing. I like to joke about how six out of the seven apps on my dock are text editors; the seventh is a browser. I already spend too much time churning out ASCII characters.
But there’s a particular type of writing that I want to get better at. It involves writing with a deadline, to an audience, about things I care about. To me, these are not things that go together well. This is writing where I cannot afford to care about clever turns of phrase, or whether the syllables flow into each other with sufficient smoothness.
I have failed at far too many things (emails, memos, paper drafts) that involved this kind of writing to ignore it any longer. I need to get better at it.
And so I need to practice.
i need to tell you about things i’ve written elsewhere
I have a site of my own now. It lives at joodaloop.com, and I plan to fill it with everything I think is worth thinking, collecting or talking about.
It will always be a work in progress, but I want a way to let people know when pages that they might find useful are more or less “done”. But Twitter hates external links, and most people don’t use RSS anymore, so this is where I’ll be sending out updates. For now, you can check out my overly long blogroll, or read some of my (bad) advice.
i would like to talk about stuff
There are smaller ideas, the kind that wouldn’t really make up a whole essay on their own. About things I love. Like the internet, and linear algebra. Like markets, and people. And software and sport and Denise Reis’ mouth trumpet.
Like I mentioned before, I will also sometimes try to summarise papers I’m reading or ideas I’m chasing down. This might feel a bit like BeWrong normally does. But the point is, I make no promises. You sign up (or stay singed up) at your own peril.
I have been asked to share cool stuff
You probably have too many open tabs. I definitely have too many open tabs (over 300 on the iPad alone). I don’t want to be the guy that adds to them. There’s already too many of those guys around.
On the other hand, there’s a long list of writers I love. I love Roger, and MacIver, and Adam, and Crispy, and Nihal, and Dedeo and everyone else I mention in my blogroll. I think more people should be looking at their ideas, and I can help make that happen.
So I’m only going to do this if you agree to do something for me, okay? This is how it works. You’re going to open the links you think are cool, and you’re going to try reading them.
If you’re tired, or feel like they are heavier reading than you’re ready for, you’re allowed to come back to them in a few hours. Or tomorrow, or the day after. That’s fine.
But if they lie in your browser for more than a week, here’s what I want you to do:
You’re going to close the tab, and forget it ever existed. Then you’re going to walk outside and get some sun. Run a couple miles if you feel like it. Run even if you don’t.
But the tabs are gone, no bookmarking, no OneTab-ing, no adding to your overflowing reading list. Okay? Deal. Now I can send you some cool stuff.
i have grand plans and silly schemes
And sometimes I need people nice enough to help me with them.
Some of you have already been kind enough to trust me with things I had no real right to attempt. For that, I am grateful. And intend to attempt more of them. I am also atrociously bad at working with people over the internet.
There is a small chance that this newsletter attracts people who are interested in the same things I am. There is a smaller chance that they will want to collaborate with me. There is an even tinier chance that we will actually start working together.
But if this happens enough times, I will be forced to get better at it. There’s only so many balls I can drop before I decide to get my act together. Or so I hope.
welcome to Q1 2023, the OKR sheet says “ball harder”.