Coming to you on dispatch from upstate New York, in the afterglow of a solar eclipse, I report to you that it has been a year since I began transmitting my writing through this newsletter called Footbridge. What started with an essay on my relationship to Russia and Ukraine (well, technically a bit earlier with a “coming soon”) has now arrived with a 50th post ~365 days later that contains—surprise—some reflections.
The whole point of this was to force myself to write more, and to that end I set an arbitrary goal to publish something new every week. I’ve mostly been doing that so far, even if I miss a week here and blatantly repurpose some old writing there. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care that my subscriber growth is on a pretty long plateau and that my page views aren’t looking so hot themselves, but It Is All About The Process, so they (and I, repeatedly) say. By the way:
Anyway, I genuinely have gotten a ton from the experience of committing to a newsletter. It’s useful to have a vehicle to force myself to continue a practice I find meaningful, fun to explore ideas free from gatekeepers or external expectations, and interesting to see what patterns rise out of me over a longer period of time. While I fully expected to write about writing itself through the lens of my long-running effort to publish a novel, some unexpected tendencies have also presented themselves. Such as:
Asking questions and savoring the attempt to answer them far more than any concrete answers in and of themselves
An obsession with the power and distortion of metaphors
Feeling down generally or specifically and working through it
Making fun of my former selves
None of these were my most-viewed essay or even my personal favorite thus far—those distinctions go to an exploration of the modern attention crisis and a wild ride through AI and transcendentalism, respectively. But they’re all a different piece of me that happened to surface in a particular moment over the span of a year.
As for what comes next, we shall see. Thanks for reading and I hope you continue to do so.
Congratulations and do keep going! I enjoy your writing and look forward to learning something new about my son every week
A big congrats to you! I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading your writing weekly and I’m looking forward to what’s coming this year.
As someone who knows how challenging it is to keep myself accountable to my creative projects including writing, it’s incredible you’ve been doing it weekly for a year! All about the process for sure