Long time no see

It's been a while! 1935 days, to be precise – December 18th, 2020 is when I sent out log files #23. I didn't know it was going to be the last email in such a long time.

End of 2020, still early in the pandemic and lockdown phase. At the end of that year I reviewed everything I was doing recurringly and dropped anything that seemed to cost me more than it gave me. No more newsletter, no more streaming, no more regular YouTube uploads, no more blogging, and a whole bunch of other things that didn't have any public visibility. I'm sure you can all relate to my desire at that time to conserve energy for things that mattered the most.

A lot has happened in those 5.5 years. I've changed jobs and then stepped into management. We hospitalized and a few years later cremated my father. I lost my running mojo for a couple of years, finally finding my way back into it a year or two ago. And of course… *gestures at the dumpsterfire all around us*.

I already talked about some of that when I first published a blog post again in early 2023. But it wasn't until I came up with the idea of doing an automated media diet that I really got back into the habit of posting something regularly. That format seems to work well for me, I'm quite glad to have collected some thoughts on all the things I've been watching, playing, reading and listening to.
Part of me wishes my writing wasn't so focused on consumption – but a) engaging with art is a worthwhile escape from the mad house we're all forced to live in, and b) keeping in the habit of writing and publishing anything at all is probably the only way for me to stay in the mindset I need to occasionally publish other stuff.

Reboot

This is all a very long preamble to a small announcement: I'll be rebooting this newsletter as well – but instead of doing it in addition to the blog like I did back in 2020, I'll just use it to distribute the blog posts. While that's what feeds are for, I know there's a bunch of you who actually like reading my ramblings but for one reason or another don't use feeds. Email is the easiest way to close that gap, so that's what I'll do.

Feel free to unsubscribe in case you're already using a feed reader; or if you don't care about my ramblings anymore in general, of course. I still don't blog much besides the monthly media diet, so usually you can expect about an email per month.

The first one should arrive tomorrow – until then, you can already check out February or January to get an idea of what it'll look like.

ttyl8r, Manu