Refactoring the newsletter
Changed format but renewed to stay true to purpose why it all started.
Focus
In the past 1 month since the last post on Tags as frames published. Yours truly on the inter-web launched a personal site, vsvivek.in. It was a spur of the moment thing.
It made me rethink the purpose of this newsletter as most of my posts(essays) will be published on the website. Cedric Chin of Common Cog writes a pertinent newsletter each week whether or not he writes a new post. Taking his format as an inspiration and the way he builds his body of work publicly I decided to change up things over here.
I also believe I have been untrue to the title and naming convention behind the newsletter as well. Back when I l announced “on the side” a year ago. I highlighted the purpose of this newsletter is to pursue a journey of curiosity with sufficient intellectual rigour.
We had 36 posts where I wrote a new post outlining a topic, experience or lessons learnt.
Now, I want to change the purpose of this newsletter to be more than reposting a new essay.
It will morph into an update bulletin with a main theme and multiple digressions in the form of links to other people’s articles.
Round up
Links to other content I have written in public across LinkedIn, websites and Twitter will feature in this section.
Down to earth
This book based on Sharad Joshi’s column in Business Line newspaper back in 2000s has made me think a lot about the situation we are in agriculture.
The book thematically breaks down into different topics of agriculture but specifically focuses on production side of things with respect to farmers.
The problems inspite of couple of decades haven’t changed fundamentally. They are now evolved with the changing times.
This initiated my focus on primary farming ecosystem and led me to illustrate the main stakeholders on either side of the farm. I teased it in a LinkedIn post.
This book has me enraged when it comes to agriculture credit aspect of it. I will write about it soon but the highlight is that farmers sign their death knell when they take a loan and fail to repay. Still digging through few sources before I have a complete picture.
Logistics Writing
Set up a summary page of all my logistics writing. The only node among all the ones illustrated in my “Mind Map V2” which has been explored sufficiently is logistics.
It has 6 posts covering my understanding of logistics so far.
Links that resonated
My own writing is a product of everyone else’s that I follow on the inter-web. Most of it is a remix of fellow mutuals writings from my own point of view.
I will be linking to such posts of fellow mutuals in this section.
interesting on demand
Visakan’s writing can also be attributed to the reason behind changing the newsletter’s format. I was trying too hard to come with original essays consistently and then cursing self for failing.
The post covers his own journey of mind trying to figure out what his newsletter’s purpose and what it means by “quality” of writing he is pursuing over there.
So my current most honest diagnosis of “wtf is going on with my substack” is that I’m internally conflicted, I’m trying to do too many things at once, I’m being too hard on myself, I’m not giving myself enough space to just be natural and say what comes naturally to me. Part of it is that I want to do these really thorough, well-researched pieces, but I don’t think those pieces are going to happen until I get a bunch of these things out of the way. I have to let go of my idea of “well-researched pieces”, and just write whatever feels like its coming, and then I have to trust that because I am the kind of guy that cares about researching things, I will write things that have research in them
It is deeply personal to me because that word “quality” really f**ked me up back in the day.
So, having my favourite interesting person struggle with it teaches that I am not the only one thinking about such pesky invisible things.
Closing Remarks
Every week going forward this will be Sunday newsletter that lands in your inbox around 9:00 AM IST.
Signing off till next time,
Vivek, refactoring self in the meantime