Welcome to this new (but not really) newsletter
Don’t get me wrong… I love long-form writing. There’s nothing quite like taking the time to build a case and elaborately stitch together a story or an idea. To really go deep and cover every single base that needs to be covered.
Medium.com (where I typically write and publish) is starting to favor, more and more, longer-form work. And I love them for that. They’re kind of the anti-Twitter (though they’re founded by a co-founder of Twitter). There needs to be a place for this on the web and they’re staking their claim. Kudos.
But here are a few things…
I’m a daily blogger (it’s just what I do)
My brain doesn’t work for writing a long-form post every day.
You don’t have time to read a long-form post every day.
I started blogging on Medium almost five years ago. Blogging was a spiritual/creative exercise where I opened my laptop and published a thought every day. Each post was really short. And people loved it.
Medium is now compensating writers based on the ‘read time’ of their readers (yep, when you read my stuff at Medium, you’re on the clock). They’re also putting longer posts in front of more eyes via their curation process.
The medium (small-m) of where we share our art matters. A painter is going to do something different on a cocktail napkin than she does on a canvas or a highway overpass.
I’ve lately felt the pressure to write longer posts over at Medium because of these new incentives for long-form work. I’m finding that my brain seizes up when I sit down to write a longer post. My preferred artform is the short-form blog. Those nuggets of joy that get straight to the point while telling a story all at the same time. ‘Tis not an easy thing to do. As Mark Twain once quipped, “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
I love sending you one little thought on a consistent (daily-ish) basis without a clickbait title, photo, subheading, etc. And I think most readers in today’s noisy digital world like this simpler form too.
As you can tell, this email looks a bit different. That’s because I’m writing it on Substack - a new software tool that’s designed for people like me who’d rather keep things simple and intimate with their readers rather than aimed towards the masses.
There are a lot of really cool things I can do with this platform. I’ll reveal more as I find my way around here, but for now, just know that you’ll be getting shorter posts from me on a daily(ish) basis (with the occasional longer one).
If you get sick of me, PLEASE unsubscribe. Seriously, I unsubscribe from all kinds of things (and sometimes, I re-subscribe later). No hard feelings should you hit that unsub button. You know where to find me if you care to come back. Come and go as much as you please.
I welcome your thoughts. You can reply to any email I send and if you click through to the website, you can add comments to continue the conversation.
I look forward to this.
Grace & Godspeed,
Jonas
P.S. And no, the irony isn’t lost on me that this was a longer post:) Thanks for reading.