All Resolutions Are Arbitrary To Begin With, So It Stands To Reason I Can Start a New One at Any Time
Or, I Woke Up One Day and Decided To Start a Newsletter
As with many things in my life, what happens next will be a confluence of something I said off hand in the past, a slight modification to fit the actualities of the present circumstances, and was prompted by several small things that culminated into a slightly bigger thing.
So, let’s start with the off hand.
One of my recurring refrains is “My taste in media is so epicurean it borders on indiscriminate.” I love consuming media. I love television, movies, comic books, book books, video games, board games, tabletops, music, video essays. I love independent of the genre and content. I love the crystallization of a time period within the fictionalized elements chosen at the time. Most notably, this manifests as a prolific tenure as a staff writer at Black Nerd Problems, a gig I took primarily to get media access and I continue to be thankful to have the ear of my editors and a place to house some of my best work.
However, I consume so *much* media (I truly can not emphasize this enough) and sometimes I’ll have an idea that for whatever reason (the timing’s off, someone else got the assignment, the niche thing is somehow even niche-r than the standard band of niche) doesn’t get to manifest as a full article and on Saturday, September 14, I woke up and said “what if I just wrote the stuff anyways.”
I already had a great title for a long running series. Sure, I imagined “Mixed Media with Mikkel” as an interview podcast series, but interviewing takes time and scheduling, and I can still do those things in the future. But the title and sentiment of this idea is solid. Take some time each week to type however many words about media. Make a newsletter. The people who want the want the ramblings will find them. I love the long form free-form approach. I like the drift, and having this side bet does not preclude me from doing my mini-reviews on BlueSky, my elaborate thread recaps in Discords, my usual freelance gigs here and there. I am a writer at my core, so it’s not all that surprising that I find myself wanting to write more and for no one’s sake but my own own.
And rather than wait, I woke up with the intent to start researching how to make a Substack. And then that became the totality of my day because my television’s backlight decided to flicker and die, and at that point, maybe I just take the universe’s advice and start. Have some fun with some quirky word art. Try something just to try it.
Why now? All resolutions are arbitrary to begin with, so it stands to reason that I can start a new one at any time.
Why Substack? It’s what my friends are using and the barrier to entry is just some menus to eventually manage a list serv.
What comes next? I don’t really know friends. Words mostly. Lots of words. We’ll see what this project becomes in due time, but right now, this is mostly just a promise that most every Tuesday you’ll get an email from me about whatever went through my mind whenever I found myself moved to write.