Dear Reader(s),
January River is taking a vacation!
Except, not a vacation, because the work will continue. So, a working vacation. Which, is a modern portmanteau that isn’t exactly and shouldn’t be.
I never endured summer school as a youth. The closest I came was a law class in grad school that was completed in I think a long weekend when I was in my 30s, and we went out for beers both nights. Pretty sure that doesn’t count.
It’s 11:10 p.m. EDT as I write this, hurriedly, to try not to miss the whole “Updated Every Tuesday” or whatever my ill-considered tagline is. I may just make it, if I’m brief. (Ha! Ha, I say again!)
I have many writing things and writing-adjacent things that I continue to work on, and need to focus on, which makes it difficult to update on a weekly basis. On the other hand, I’ve been doing this for several years now and I’m reluctant to abandon the two of you who’ve bookmarked the site and check in religiously every day-after-Monday. On the other-other hand, I’ve got several years of content that I’m sure not everybody has read. On the other-other-other hand, hey, maybe if I ask nicely some of you will “subscribe to my newsletter” or “sign up for my mailing list” or whatever we’re calling it these days.
That last one doesn’t seem to exactly fit the pattern. It almost seems like it’s been bolted on, added as a last-minute addition to an already hasty strategic whatever ok I gotta get moving and publish this thing so:
- Summer is, in fact, starting, and I will be doing things and traveling places
- I will also be writing a ton, although most of it’s stuff you won’t see for probably a pretty long time
- I won’t be publishing brand new stuff every Tuesday until September so I can focus on the new stuff
- I will be posting carefully curated lists of selected works from the past three-ish years so you can check out things that are already written
- I will also be asking you to be a free subscriber to my Substack so I am in a position to potentially be able to offer printed works and other things in the future, because this is how marketing works, apparently
I think that’s it. Does that make sense? Is that a sensible path forward, a strategy, if you will? I suppose we will see!
Now, for the payoff: here are some of my favorites from recent writings:
fixer-upper– endings and beginnings and endings and beginnings…
insomnia– just stop thinking; simple
misreckoning– the fungibility of memory is the center of the Tootsie Pop of nostalgia
Finally, I have not previously asked specifically for “subscriptions” or anything of the like. I have also not asked for any remuneration. That will not change; these works are free and will continue to be so. However, if you would be so kind as to let me know if you are interested in knowing when new stuff is written, please consider following me here and/or subscribing (it is free) to my “newsletter” or whatever. I will not spam you. You will get email notifications on Tuesdays when there’s new stuff. That’s it.
What I get out of it is, I’m able to quantify that people are interested in this stuff, and so if I want to try to make printed versions of things available, I’m able to make a better argument as to why somebody with a printing press would consider using it for my stuff. The list doesn’t get sold or rented or whatever.
Anyway. You certainly don’t have to. There’s a feature on most browsers where you “bookmark” a “website” and “check it out” on a “regular basis” which you can remember to do on your own. Or, you can utilize many different apps—even physical devices!—that will remind you to do a thing at a point in time.
Enough; this feels icky already. I’ve got 30 minutes. Gotta hit publish.
See you at the beach! I’ll be the pale guy with a MacBook and a really, really long extension cord.
-jr
