First, a Bit of Housekeeping

You may have noticed that this email looks a bit different from my last; after over a year of meaning to find the time to move off of Substack, I finally accepted that I would likely never find the time, so I might as well just go ahead and overclock myself for a week to get it done. Welcome to The Third Place, Buttondown edition! Your subscriptions and so forth should have transferred, and I’m told that Substack’s tithe will no longer be taken out of your subscription, since I’m paying a flat fee for Buttondown’s services. The proof will be in the billing cycle.

It’s customary on occasions like this to write a “why I’m leaving New York” type post about why I’m making the switch, and while the reasons may be self-explanatory, who am I to turn down the opportunity to write in a fun new genre? Expect that probably later this week. But I had a post written and ready to go, so: here we are! The first inaugural Third Place Gift Guide.

Gift Guide / Stuff Scrapbook?

I look forward to Robin Sloan's gift guide every year—it’s a good source of present ideas, sure, but also it’s a humanist scrapbook of neat stuff. I’ve often thought, I should do one and the same vein! But then the second-guessing sets in: I fail to get my act together before December, and gifts are so personal—but, what the heck, here are a few things I've loved this year. Some of them might qualify as gifts.

Memo Pad (any) and Uniball Jetstream

See, this is what I mean: this is less of a gift rec than a personal practice recommendation.

I've been carrying my phone less these days. I probably don't need to write an essay about why, I mean, you can guess and I probably will write that essay anyway but I won't write it now. I have a phone, of course, because smartphones are miraculous and convenient: an extraordinarily powerful camera, music player, birdcall identifier, and game console with access to the sum total of the world's knowledge and ugh, I guess, my email, and it's all about the size of a pack of cigarettes and a bit less bad for you. But I've been looking to devolve as many of its functions as I can.

Most of the vital-access-connectivity stuff goes straight to my Apple Watch, which I wear because I like watching Fitness Points Go Up. When I know I'm going to want to take pictures, I have a good camera, or I bring the cell phone and keep it in a bag. But I have struggled to devolve ephemeral notes and reminders. I keep a journal, but my A5 notebook plus cover plus pen is a lot to haul out for a quick note, or consult in the grocery store, and often I've left it back at my desk or in another room of the house. So I have ended up making a bunch of quick-jot notes on my phone's notes app, where they promptly disappear into the infinite void behind the black mirror—and both the occasion of writing the note, and of checking it later, present an attack surface to attention harvesters. Bleh.

Finally I had the dimmest-bulb ephiphany in the history of dim-bulb epiphanies and started carrying a tiny memo pad. Just any dang wire bound pocket memo pad I could find. I'm using Maruman Mnemosyne A7s at the moment because I wanted a FP-friendly notepad and I bought ten because they were cheaper that way, but I found that fountain pens dried too slowly on the Mnemosyne paper so I got a cheap (but really good, light touch, dries fast) Uniball JetStream instead. Now the walking-around drafts of emergency agendas, present lists, TCG scores, meal plans, essay ideas, quotes I want to remember, and quick sketches all live in my pocket. I copy anything I’ll want to refer to later down in my journal; when I fill the notepad I stack it up next to my filled journals. If I lose a notepad, if it gets wet, no big deal. And it turns out that "flip open the notebook and jot a line" is a faster and more efficient interaction than anything I can do with my phone. Give it a shot! You can keep your phone in your purse or sling bag. It'll be fine.

KingJim Pomera d250

I wrote enthusiastically about this digital typewriter earlier in the year and it continues to be a thing of beauty. The screen looks great in backlit LED white-text-on-black mode, the keyboard is a bit smaller than I'd wish but perfectly servicable, and it... just... writes! I haven't used it quite as often as I expected to back in January, since I did a lot of screenwriting and co-writing this year, both of which require more connected tools. But it is fantastic for roughing out essays (like this one), and working on fiction feels wonderful, fresh and light and easy. Sometimes, on the big monitor, the book I'm writing can feel stuck in a net of obligation—the big monitor is the same place where I send emails to my editor, and do marketing, and make my budget, and file my taxes. (In the new year I want to experiment with offloading as much of that stuff as I can to another screen, or another room entirely... the emotional mulch of it all accumulates in the corners of my office. But that’s another essay.)

But if I pop the scene I'm working on over to the Pomera, it's free. My partner and I don't go on dates often, what with one thing and another, but when we do we try to go out—to set clear boundaries between home life and the excursion, so we don't spend the entire evening talking about the stuff we'd otherwise cover in a house meeting. I've heard that some people take it so far as 'pretend first dates'? This feels a bit like that would, I think. Forget the scene's place in a web of obligation and ambition and momentum and memory; just write some words, play around, and see where they take you.

If you’re in the U.S.A., it’s going to be a bit hard to source the dm250, due to the general mess that our government has made of things. I’d avoid paying US list of $499 for its US-specific sibling if you can avoid it—I picked this one up on Amazon.co.jp for south of $300, though it looks as though that avenue’s closed.

Boox Palma

I got the Palma purely as a pocket-sized e-ink reader, a book that could literally fit in my hip pocket, and I’ve read a ton on it since. I fell back in love with physical interlibrary loan this fall, and the Palma has spent more time on the counter since then, but I still read a lot on it, particularly ARCs and books to blurb; it's a delight to hold and use and carry (though you will want to get the case to forestall scratches). I've found the Android tablet functionality more relevant and useful than I expected, too—we don't have much in the way of Smart Home Features (I still believe that the Internet of Things amounts to the Internet of Things that Shouldn't be on the Internet), but we have a few wireless connected speakers, and it's great to be able to control them without my phone. (Max, you say, that's what the voice controls are for! I get you, dear reader. But, dear reader, voice controls are a cop.) I haven’t put email or antisocial media or other apps on this device because, in my mind, that’s not What it’s For, and in fact Not Being For those things is the whole point of having the device in the first place. But I guess you could do that if you want.

And that’s a wrap

So, those are a few thoughts, for you or for the writer / reader in your life. Nothing essential, but fun. Beyond that.... books! Get books. They're good.

You may be interested in some of mine?

And: Thank You

Thanks for reading, everyone. Thank you for what you’re doing to help the people in your life. Take care of one another. We’re all in this together.