What Is Neil DOING?
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Words of Advice
September 15, 2024
A friend recently asked me to write some words of wisdom to their kid who’s graduating high school. They and their spouse were putting together a book of...
The Joy of Phish, Pt. 2
February 18, 2024
Oh, hi. For a refresher on how we got here, you can re-read the TinyLetter archive of Pt. 1. I’m trying to figure out how to make the new What Is Neil Doing...
The Joy of Phish, Pt. 1?
November 23, 2023
One evening this past July I was at a Phish concert, standing on the amphitheater lawn right before the music started, and I felt something drop onto my...
Bicycles I've known and loved (and sometimes lost)
August 10, 2023
I have a lot of disparate memories associated with bikes and biking: beach town cruising, years of commuting, moving house once “like the Viet Cong” my...
Where is "Old Town"?
June 12, 2023
Apparently 11 years ago last week I was in Lisbon, Portugal for a long weekend with my friend Joel. I say "apparently" because if you’d asked me on...
An answering machine greeting I'll never forget
April 3, 2023
One of my good friends as a kid, one of my closest early friends who I can really say “I grew up with him,” was a kid named Will. I can remember so much...
I've done it again
February 7, 2023
Partially inspired by my own recent listicle here and also by Action Cookbook’s absolute banger of a newsletter recently, I have taken a few hours to...
Who are the people in your neighborhood?
January 24, 2023
New year, newsletter. I spent over 2 years not knowing any of my nearest neighbors, despite living in an apartment complex containing dozens of units. The...
Counting down and walking away
November 16, 2022
Hi. I’m sure I could have spun these together with some connective material, but I didn’t. I hereby present my first newsletter listicle: 11 memorable...
Listening to Weird Al in the laundry room
October 10, 2022
One of the formative experiences in my late adolescence was doing laundry at nerd camp, also known as the Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented...
Am I becoming a Tom Miller?
March 31, 2022
My hometown newspaper, the Corning Leader, aka “the Misleader” has never been in my lifetime a particularly intellectual forum for thoughtful discourse or...
The Lake House
February 1, 2022
We’re back at it again with the three-months-of-content newsletter! To what do we owe the pleasure? Anxiety. Desire. Accomplishment. Perfectionism....
Art, but for children
January 11, 2022
Hi. This series continues again, finally. October was just last week, no? Oh, for Pete's sake. Let’s start with a sort of apology. I must issue two...
Crying at the Sleepover
August 3, 2021
It is safe to say that I cried more during the month of May than I had in any month before. Probably more even than the past several years combined, to be...
Castle of Lost Dreams was on port 23
May 9, 2021
Something that weirdly prepared me for life in 2020s was hanging out in text-based, international chat rooms of the mid-90s. Not creepy ones or repetitive...
I remember how to write these, I think.
February 3, 2021
The other night as I tried to get to sleep I wondered: how many hotels have I slept in? I came up with twenty-five and that's almost certainly missing a few....
Pink Flamingos
October 22, 2020
Sweet socially distant readers: One morning in college, we collectively woke up to discover dozens of pink lawn flamingos installed on the “Upper” quad. This...
AMC & the Little League World Series
August 19, 2020
Hi. Each August as a kid, I'd find myself in southeastern Ohio visiting my grandparents for a few days. They lived in a sleepy town, Marietta, wholly...
It Was Gonna Be May's Newsletter
July 13, 2020
“Do you like guacamole?” I had no idea what was being asked of me. I was in first grade, and the person asking was a classmate named Tara, whose birthday...
Let's look back
May 26, 2020
Hey, wow, what a strange April. The strangest April ever? I spent a lot of afternoons in middle school at the public library. Classes ended at 2:45. Then...
Interesting and Challenging Is Right
April 27, 2020
Hi. In my last newsletter, I wrote “[the] next few weeks will be interesting and challenging.” Uh. Yes. I've mentally started this issue(is that the word?) a...
Some light content, some thoughtful content
March 12, 2020
Oh, Mid-March readers, hello. On Leap Day, I attended a concert with my friend Rob. The concert was plainly advertised as a five-hour affair, the marathon...
Wild Wild Newsletter
February 10, 2020
Sweet readers, The past few weeks have reminded me of some writing projects I used to undertake that, one way or another, I no longer do. For a period in...
Saturday Night's Alright for Writing
January 12, 2020
Happy new year! The first music video I remember seeing was Tom Cochrane's "Life is a Highway" in the summer of '92 with Counselor Joe, one of the most...
Faster than a cup of coffee
December 10, 2019
Year-End Givers And Takers, Over Thanksgiving weekend, I had a chance to catch up with my friend Greg who runs a travel company ViaHero. Through his work and...
The Great Neilish Newslettering Show
November 4, 2019
Former Daylight-savers, I apologize for the typo in the opening sentence of my previous newsletter. I endeavor to avoid such errors in the future. This month...
The September Issue
October 6, 2019
Consumers of content, Let's just agree that I send my newsletters a few months into a new month. Consider it a clever move so that I can include whatever was...
Oops!... I Did It* Again * - Sent a newsletter late
September 1, 2019
Twenty-three years ago last month, I started trading Grateful Dead concert tapes on USENET's rec.music.gdead. What seemed like it might be a weeklong...
Cheese plates and retreats
August 2, 2019
The summer has felt a bit of a whirlwind of opportunities, new professional connections, and trying to follow through on some previously laid plans at work...
Do I Capitalize This Like A Title or like a sentence?
June 5, 2019
Some weeks back, writer Nicole Cliffe started one of her signature open question Twitter threads. What's the kindest thing a stranger has ever done for you?...
Sneaking This One In Before May Ends
May 30, 2019
Howdy, howdy, howdy, It's time for me to jam on my keyboard for a while and think about what I'm doing with my life! I don't have a lot up top here, partly...
Life is just a pile of paperwork jammed between restaurant visits
April 29, 2019
This week, we all learned something together. Maybe you didn't notice, but I sure did. What we learned is that I can't get a newsletter out every calendar...
Spring means herbs and spring means bounce
March 13, 2019
Making Time Per my last email, February can be hard, and let's be honest, March can be hard too. Luckily this month I had an "Equinox Partyluck" to look...
Short newsletters for short months for short people
February 7, 2019
Among a particular set of my college friends, February was known as "The Month of Sin & Degradation." This belief/tradition started before I got there, and...
Wherein you find out what I write in my newsletters
January 20, 2019
Friends, It seems it's pleasantly come to this. I've been writing online in some way since 1997 or so, and we're right back at the beginning?! Sure, I've...