Sorry I disappeared for a while there. I know everyone says this after a prolonged absence, but I didn't intend to drop off the map like that. Apologies! I am, in fact, still alive (I have that special "abstract chalky awareness that I [am] still breathing," to slightly misquote Richard Brautigan), and nothing disastrous has happened, apart from some genuinely epic time mismanagement and a kind of vague winter malaise. I've also realized that if I don't give myself some sort of structured goal for this newsletter, I won't actually write it. I'm mildly shocked by that, as I consider myself intrinsically motivated. But apparently, if I don't explicitly state that I plan to send this newsletter 52 times yearly, I just stop writing it. Wow. Gonna have to work on that.
I'm in a really weird place emotionally. In some ways, I feel better than I have since childhood. And in other ways, I feel like I have absolutely no worth as a human being and probably ought to start a YouTube channel to prove that hypothesis. (I've fallen down some pretty fun YT essayist rabbit holes lately, though, and am now just straight up in love with Münecat.)
I haven't been working on my fiction like I said I would, and although I have been working on, um, actual paid work, I have been procrastinating on that, too. I've mostly been binge-reading. (I've already read or listened to 70 books this year.) I guess I'm lucky I didn't fall into the clutches of some kind of guru/cult situation — or just some sort of internet marketing scammer. (Spoiler alert: Don't buy courses from people telling you how to make money at something, as they make their own money by selling courses, not the skill they're supposedly teaching you to do. Now, if I saw a course called "How to Sell a Course Telling Your Readers How to Sell Courses Because Selling Courses Is All We Do Now"? Maybe I would click that sales funnel. Also, someone should help me make an app for marketing cooking blogs called "Sales Fennel." Finally, an honest money-making opportunity!)
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I need to write this newsletter to keep me out of trouble. I gotta sling some words to keep me off the streets! So I'll be back on Friday with (maybe) some structured goals and (definitely) more dungpost glory for your delectation.