Hey there
At some point in the past, you very kindly signed up to hear from me once in a while. It’s been quite some time since I last sent one of these out. Some difficult professional things happened, some difficult life things happened, the pandemic happened and...well, I just didn’t feel much like talking. You know how it goes. But I’ve missed this, and I’m ready to start talking again.
This is not to say that I’ve been entirely silent all this time. I’ve been on Twitter. Oh boy have I been on Twitter. I won’t bore you with a lamentation about the ways that Twitter has changed, because we all know it. I’m still on there all the damn time, and I still get good things out of it, but it sucks that I can no longer assume that when I say something on Twitter, I’m mostly speaking to a well-intentioned, friendly audience who is disposed to assume good faith in me, and in whom I can assume good faith.
I am not leaving Twitter. I like a hell of a lot of you who I know on there, and we do still have fun, don’t we? Yeah. We do. But because of the changing ways in which I find myself interacting with Twitter—a manner of interaction that involves a not-insignificant amount of self-protection and self-editing and self-censoring—because it sucks when a tweet goes viral and the Nazis come for you, and because it sucks when some asshole quote-tweets you in a mean-spirited, willfully misinterpreted way for clout or some cheap dunk, and because it also sucks when you put something out onto the timeline that you really care about and it’s met with silence... Because of all of that, I’m finding that I’m missing this TinyLetter.
I miss the opportunity to be in open communication about my thoughts, to talk to people with my guard down a little more. I miss talking to a group who has chosen to be here with me. I miss talking at length without an eye on the character count. So I’m starting this newsletter up again, because I want to talk with you. I want to be in conversation with you.
I don’t intend to clutter up your inbox. I’ll send these out once or possibly twice a month. I’ll let you know what I’m thinking about this or that, and I want to hear back from you if you’re so inclined. One of the things I like about TinyLetter is that you can email me right back. Please feel free to do so. I’d love to hear from you. And if you just want to hang out and read, that’s great, too.
Things were already hard when I last sent these letters around, and they’ve gotten exponentially harder. The proper response to that, as I see it, is community. Build more community. So here we are. Thanks for sticking around through my silence. I’m glad to be back.
Yours ever true,
Cari