I’m writing this on Sunday night, and I’m writing this because as much as I have enjoyed making videos for the sake of making videos and as much as that is a skill I’m glad I have in the back pocket, it’s also one that I’m not particularly excited to cultivate. I am at my core, a writer. I like words, and if there is anything to glean from the first five days of my 30/30 is that I’ve missed playing, which I suppose brings us to the question at hand:

How’s the 30/30 going?

Well, you can follow me in real time, either directly in the google doc or via the running Bluesky/MyAtProto.Social thread, since I did switch to the agnostic protocol, which is something I vaguely understand the details of.

But, it’s going well. I have already ran into the usually late game problem of “not knowing what I’m actually going to write about” but considering that this is something I haven’t done in a minute, that can and should be forgiven.

Right now, each of the poems has a very distinct structure and I think that has inadvertently ended up being the central fascination for this month: form dictating function.

01/30 started out with this cute spelling out Luddite gimmick that evolved into having a staircase structure since I was taken by l’espirit de l’escalier after an interview I had that morning.

02/30 was inspired by a friend’s use of punctuation and trying to play with language and all the turns of phrase.

03/30 was where you can tell that I had no idea exactly what I was doing, but still churned something out. Probably not going to go anywhere past this page, but the expectation of a 30/30 is not 30 great poems, it’s 30 questionable poems.

04/30 was of course crossword inspired, but it is also what firmly planted this idea of form into my head. I like the playfulness. I like the coyness. I like the invention of character and misunderstanding. It tells a story in the format, and that’s cool. And that’s fun, and that what’s been missing I think from my writing as of late.

05/30 is a clumsy attempt at writing a rage against Catholicism on Easter, but also did the coolest thing with the page thus far, literally mimicking the shape of its namesake with the structure of the page. I think the content of the poem is clumsy at best, but it’s also the piece I’m most proud of and the one that I’m probably going to actively revise and sit with and try and make something that only I would make, and that’s a victory in and of itself.

So we’ll see what happens with 06 to 12. I think for this particular experiment as I am writing writing more, I’ll keep this newsletter to text, and probably resume my usual cadence in May when I’m not dredging the recesses of my mind for idea and execution.

But hey, if you’re reading this: take joy in the attempt.