This is the Final Issue of The Hughsletter
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Hey there.
This is the last issue of The Hughsletter. In the paragraphs below, I tell you how we got here, what’s next, and what you need to do if you want to keep reading my stuff - or if you don’t.
During the height of the pandemic, I began blogging again, but blogging had changed over the years. In the old days, people read blogs via RSS readers. They got blog posts served to them automatically, the same way your podcast player tells you when your favorite podcast gets a new episode. (Fun fact – they use the same technology, and RSS is still the best way to read blogs you care about. My blog’s RSS feed is here.)
Most people who read blogs these days rely on a link to a blog post showing up on their social media timeline. People who are mistrustful of social media algorithms subscribe to blogs via email. Say what you will about email, but it is free and open and has nearly 100% reliability. So, I decided to push my posts by email. But I was publishing a lot in those days – it was a sanity management strategy, to tell you the truth- and nobody wants an email every day from me. So, I sent an email every Friday with links to all the posts I had written that week.
But just sending a list of links seemed cold, and I learned that those emails didn’t get opened. So I started writing an introductory paragraph or two, which soon turned into a short essay. Oh, and here’s some links to a few weird things I found, and here is a link to something else I liked, and before you know it, there goes my Friday morning every week. But at the height of the pandemic, I welcomed the work.
Hell, I needed the work.
Things are different these days. As I mention in the first link below, my blogging has changed. Shorter posts with a broader range of topics. I’m trying to shift my writing away from social media and keep it on platforms I own or control. And now I have a different day job that often requires my presence on Friday mornings, meaning I had to shift the writing to other times. And perhaps worst of all, I felt like having two newsletters with two different foci just created confusion in the minds of both the reader (that’s you) and the writer (that’s me). I was unsure which newsletter to tell someone to subscribe to, and how to market (for want of a better term) them.
So, I’m dropping The Hughsletter. I will publish Life Is So Beautiful every Monday morning, as I have done for nearly eight years. And I will continue to blog in my newer, looser style. For now, I will be adding the links to things I wrote as a new section in Life Is So Beautiful.
What this means for you
If you are already a Life Is So Beautiful (LISB) subscriber, you don’t have to do anything. You will keep getting LISB on Monday mornings, and the links to the previous week’s posts will be included in that email.
If you are not a current LISB subscriber, I will add you to that list next week, and you will begin getting LISB emails on the 30th of January. That way, you can continue to get the links to the things I published the week prior via email. And you won't miss any, as this week's links are below.
If you do NOT want to be added to that list and never want to hear from me again, just use the link at the bottom of this email to unsubscribe.
There are many moving pieces to this puzzle, and I may get some of them wrong. I ask for your grace as I go through this process, and most of all, I’m grateful for your reading, however you do it.
I should also say that all this work is always sponsored by my members, who pay small amounts every month (or year!) and enable me to afford never to have ads or sponsored posts. A few people pay for all of this, and I could never do it without them. To learn more about membership, check out this link.
What I wrote this week:
As part of the shift, I’m also changing the blog layout. Thanks for your patience in this process, and excuse the dust and debris.
Writing For People: Why I’m not terribly worried about AI as a writer.
Fewer, Better Things: I return to blogging after a month away, and I came to some conclusions.
Other things
RIP David Crosby. This one hurt.
This essay is one of the things shaping how I feel about social media and how I’m shifting my writing: Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things.
This thread on Twitter lists ten websites that give you superpowers.
Thank you
Thank you for everything. Seriously. Don't cry because it's over - smile because it happened.
HH