Hi! I’m starting a newsletter!
I have been thinking about doing this for more than a year. But when your perfectionism is crippling – as mine can be – you convince yourself that you have to do so much work to get it out there. Which service? Who should I send it to? What will I put in it if I haven’t had anything published recently? Font? Length? Subject matter?
I have this quote on my laptop screen and I’ve been using it to motivate me to do more writing. Today, it hit me in the newsletter breadbasket and it’s probably why you’re also reading this right now.
This quote is from a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear and it’s pretty straightforward. Time for action.
Anyway, why a newsletter? Mainly, it’s because social media is unreliable at best these days, and it seems like a good time to create a direct line of communication between me and my readers/skimmers/somewhat-interested parties. When I was forced to share my work, I usually did it on Twitter which seems like not really a great idea anymore. (You know, there was a time when I felt as if Twitter was the beginning of the end for journalism, and now that it’s in its death throes, I’m sad because it was a great way to share … journalism. It’s also a great way to share the worst stuff, but I’ll digress. For today.)
The bottom line: I’m a former award-winning journalist who would still be doing it if I had time and energy for job insecurity and low pay. Now I want to spread the message of media literacy because boy do we all need to learn that right now.
Lots of first going on for me right now, like the fact that my longtime tennis blog is now a podcast! Check it out!
Like, review, share, repeat, repeat …
And please do the same for this newsletter, if you think there’s someone who’d benefit from it. Bye now.