Fresh Coat of Paint
July 31, 2024
3-Item Status
Current location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Reading: Deep Utopia by Nick Bostrom
Listening: Messy by Lola Young
Quick Notes
Buy Me a Coffee: If you’d like to support my work, you can buy me a coffee here (becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter does basically the same thing automatically each month).
Poll: For this week’s poll I ask a question about promotions (please do tell me your thoughts on this!).
(If you have a moment, reply with your own 3-Item Status and/or Quick Notes about what’s happening in your life.)
Fresh Coat of Paint
Novelty can be fun and refreshing; new home, new job, new relationships, new clothes or classes or whatever else.
Introducing different variables into our lives in the right way can serve as a self-instigated milestone from which we can kick-off in any direction—similar to a birthday or new calendar year, but triggered by the purchase of a couch, a move to an unfamiliar city, or the blooming of a fresh friendship.
There’s something to be said for refurbishment and reinvention too, though, as applying a fresh coat of paint and rearranging or repairing (rather than replacing) can trigger the same “I’m moving from one paradigm into another” sensation, and at times it will make more sense to put new meat on existing bones, rather than burying an otherwise fully functional (and still valuable) skeleton.
I’ve been working through a backlog of stretch-projects, and one of my long-intended ambitions was to update a half-dozen of my most popular, but increasingly long-in-the-tooth books so that they better align with my more recent offerings.
This has generally meant fixing the odd typo, tidying up grammatical sprawl, and bringing focus to unclear language, though I’ve also updated old book files so they’re using more modern (and functional) publishing templates, simplified sales copy, and redesigned their covers (in some cases radically, but in most cases just simplifying them so they’re less all over the place).
I started this process back at the beginning of 2023 when I set aside time to work through each book, making changes where warranted and recording new audio versions as I went along.
A lot happened that year and early this year, so those files sat for a spell as I focused on family issues and other, more deadline-oriented work. But these past few months have opened up so that I’ve been able to get it all done: the publishing platforms I work with are still paging through some of the updates, so the new editions are not 100% live, but my portion of the labor is basically complete.
Which feels good! It’s cathartic, this sense that a huge chunk of my body of work is a lot tighter and of-a-kind with my contemporary offerings. The books haven’t changed in any fundamental way and they’re still representative of the era in which they were written, but they’re more intentionally produced and presented, and I feel a lot better talking about and selling them, again.
Addressing these (long-held) concerns feels like unloading a back-stiffening burden or deep-cleaning a long-neglected basement: an aspect of my life that had become a psychological drag has been lightened.
A metaphorical space that was cluttered, dusty, and cobweb-strewn is suddenly not just usable, but open, welcoming, and gleaming with potential.
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If you enjoyed this essay, consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee.
Interesting Links
David Fairchild and his wife, Marian—the daughter of Alexander Graham Bell—published Book of Monsters after a laborious summer creating some of the earliest macrophotographs of tiny creatures in their backyard just north of Chevy Chase, Maryland. Filled with full-page images of recently deceased insects, spiders, myriapods, and pill bugs, the book brought a miniature world to life in a new way, turning bugs into fantastical beasts.
In addition to WALL·E’s front plate, Gunship is seen on Earth and aboard the Axiom, the flagship spacecraft of megacorporation Buy n Large (BnL, for short), most notably for robot-facing wall and door typography. Its upper- and lowercase variants include different combinations of cutouts and curve orientations, giving designers flexibility when crafting robot signage. (Strictly speaking, this means that our hero’s name, correctly capitalized, is “waLL·e,” with the interpunct as a further customization—Gunship’s own interpunct is rectangular.)
What if Absolutely Everything Is Conscious?
From the Greek words pan (all) and psyche (soul), panpsychism is the view, held by many peoples around the world since antiquity, that consciousness resides in everything at least to some degree—that it’s a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical universe. Animals have it, plants have it, and even single cells have it. That doesn’t mean your chair is conscious—but, according to some panpsychists, the atoms inside it might be. How exactly that could work is a philosophical puzzle (more on that soon).
(If you want more links to interesting things, consider subscribing to Aspiring Generalist.)
Poll
Last week’s poll was about caffeinated beverage consumption, and it looks like most of you are drinking coffee and tea in a fairly healthy range—nice work!
This week, I’d like you to help me figure out what, if any, promotional methods might make sense for the work that I do (and for the people who engage with that work).
I’ve sharply turned away from most marketing and promotional gimmickry over the past decade, but I make my living from my books, publications, and podcasts. That means I need to not just make people more aware of said work, but convince some of those who read and listen to give me money so I can pay the rent and buy groceries.
That’s an uncomfortable ask! But it’s a necessary component of keeping efforts like this afloat.
Thus: which of these methods of promotion for an online publication (like this one, or like Brain Lenses, Let’s Know Things, etc) would be most compelling to you (in the sense that you would feel inclined to become a paid supporter, rather than a free one)?
Also: if you have thoughts on this beyond the options in the poll I would love to hear from you, as this is a perennial issue for me that I’d like to figure out, and in the least annoying, relationship-with-readers-ruining way possible. Please respond to this newsletter and share your insights :)
Outro
Last weekend’s ballet class was great!
It was exactly what I hoped it would be: a lot of solid technical exercises that prepare students for future performance-related moves, but which focus a lot on flexibility and stability, especially in areas that are important for more or less every aspect of movement—good for higher-end ballet practice, but also just good in general.
I’m thinking it’ll be fun to try out some other dance classes offered by the same school (jazz dance maybe, to start?), but I’m going to give the ballet lessons a little time to soak in, first, and maybe that’ll give me a leg-up (literally and figuratively) with other such efforts.
What are you working on at the moment? Want some words of encouragement from a stranger on the internet? Drop me a message and tell me about it (or whatever else is on your mind), and/or take a moment to introduce yourself—I respond to every message I receive and would love to hear from you :)
I voted for a discounted sub because the 17% discount on the annual sub pushed me over the line from unsubscriber to subscriber. Since you make a living from your published work, I hesitate about giving some of it away for free, unless maybe for a higher memebership tier so it would still be profitable for you.
Also, I like the way you described finishing (or just about finishing) a string of projects as being like a fresh coat of paint. I usually think of finishing projects or closing open loops as creating a clean slate, a metaphor that implies a sense of possibility, but is far less colourful or inspirational than a fresh coat of paint. I like your metaphor better :)