Fresh off the press...

Hey!

I’m back with a new edition. I shall get into details on the long break, but before that, some necessary housekeeping! The frequency of this newsletter is going change (not that I kept to one fastidiously). The prior biweekly schedule was a bit too tight to juggle alongside full-time work. So, I’m moving it to a more monthly cadence. That gives me some additional time to ideate and draft. And also more time to select and post-process pictures is always welcome. Both of these, along with a change in my workflow, should help keep this newsletter going more regularly. I’m open to any additional ideas/suggestions you have as well!

Now, onto why I went AWOL. While I’d like to point to one big, specific event, it was honestly a bunch of different incidents that cascaded. The stone that started the landslide was a toxic working environment at my previous job, which (unsurprisingly) started around the time I sent out my last edition. Coming home after an emotionally and physically draining day, you’re just not in the right state of mind to create anything. The exhaustion is so complete that you just want to turn on some distraction and turn off your brain. The consequence was that it hurt all of my hobbies and creative pursuits. Pastimes that I used to enjoy became not so enjoyable - running, reading, etc. Even post-processing my photos, which I’d always found fun, started feeling like a chore, leading to a backlog of nearly 8000 pictures overdue for processing.

Thankfully, I changed jobs shortly after that. I’m in a much better place now - both mentally and work-wise. Hobbies started feeling fun again, and I started chipping away at my photo backlog. But, whenever I tried to pick writing back up, a small voice in my head kept asking if the stuff I wrote was worth reading. You all know that voice - that tiny, pessimistic, but persistent fellow up there who loves to sit and talk bad about everything. Unfortunately, I listened to him. I put aside this newsletter, and writing in general and decided to pick up something new. I tried a lot of stuff - from ukulele, to homelabbing and even bouldering. But I stuck with nothing since I kept procrastinating the part where I needed to practice. I’d learn something new, and then just switch to learning something else. Basically, I let the Monkey in my Brain run rampant. Just hopped around hobbies without going any deeper than just surface level. A quintessential ”Jack of All Trades”, if you will.

Recently however, I stumbled upon the r/fountainpens group on Reddit. I used to use my dad’s old Hero pens in school, but then somewhere along the way, I stopped. I thought maybe I can try some new ones and so got a LAMY, wondering if it’ll be still as interesting as before? Turns out, yes, they are still very interesting and fun. And I found myself using it for writing, doodling, sketching, etc. Daphne saw how much I enjoyed it, and so she got me a fancier pen along with a very beautiful ink (TWSBI Vac700R with Jacques Herbin 1607 Émeraude de Chivor if you’re curious). I was smitten.

It was so nice to write with that I started writing more. And I kept trying to find topics to write about just for an excuse to use the pen. And that’s when she suggested why not pick this back up? Maybe draft using pen and paper, and then move it over to digital for editing? Which was a perfect idea. The pessimist in my head tried to argue against that, but I was enjoying the pen too much to listen. And so, I grabbed one of my nicer notebooks (paper is another rabbit hole I fell into) and just started writing. It was honestly much more fun than sitting in front of a monitor and thinking of what to write. And the bonus of not being able to edit as you go meant that I had to be careful how I worded everything. William Zinsser is attributed with the quote - “Writing is thinking on paper”, and I think that summarizes it well. When you’re writing something in a more immutable medium like paper, you’re forced to think about the how, what and why of your writing before writing. It forces you to slow down and be more deliberate. This edition was mostly written at my dining table at home. Tools were pen and paper, with some Enya playing in the background. Once I was happy with how the draft read, I moved it over to my computer, polished it and hit Send.

I think I’ve got a good workflow set up with this.

As an apology for missing so many editions, here’s a photo of a cute little fellow I captured at Yellowstone National Park last year. Martes americana or the American marten is a small solitary hunter of the European pine marten family, related to weasels and badgers. They usually hunt down on the ground for smaller mammals like voles and such and are much more active during the summer than winter. This fellow here was taking an afternoon siesta on a tree-branch. Warmth and shade does make me sleepy as well…

Yellowstone overall was a very fun trip. Saw lots of bison, a moderate number of bears and deer, a few elusive wolves and cubs and a whole lot of Nature. I might take a stab at writing about it when I’ve finished editing all the pictures from that trip.

That’s about it for this issue. Like I mentioned at the start, I’m still working out a good working rhythm to keep this newsletter coming out on a monthly cadence. With the new workflow, that should be smoother. But if I’m feeling especially motivated, I might drop an ad-hoc one here and there. No promises!

Until next time, ciao!

Bonus Pic: