I’m coming back after my long break and I’ve made some changes to the newsletter!
The rest of this email is an info dump about the changes I’m making and the reasons for the changes. If you’d rather just see the new changes, go ahead and delete this message and look for a new issue of the newsletter on Wednesday.
I want to thank everyone who sent me messages of support and reassurance. It’s impossible to explain how much that meant to me.
If you’re curious about the newsletter changes, here they are.
First, I’m now publishing on Wednesdays.
Second, I’m finally committing to a format and type of content.
Each week you will find a brief introduction, poetry comics, some experimental comics, and a make cool stuff section. In the make cool stuff section, I’ll share stuff I’ve come across that relates to making things. I’m warning you now that most of the things I share will be books, podcasts, and music because that’s the stuff I’m mostly consuming these days.
The experimental comics will be everything from slice-of-life comics to visual essays. It’s going to be an ongoing experiment in visual storytelling as I try and figure out what works and what doesn’t.
The last change is that each week of the newsletter will now be sponsored. This is the best way for me to keep the newsletter free. As this newsletter is still small, the sponsors of the newsletter will be one of my books, zines, or services.
I’ve spent most of the past several months agonizing about how to move forward with my creative career with the increased demands on my time. A quote from the first Lord of the Rings book kept haunting me.
In the Fellowship of the Ring, Bilbo tells Gandalf, “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”
This is exactly how I feel. I repeatedly write this quote in my journal. I even wrote a haiku about it:
I recently found an old Seth Godin blog post from 2015 where he talks about this quote. Seth asks what if instead of looking for more butter, “we find the discipline to cover less bread?”
As soon as I read the post, I understood that I needed to cover less bread. That’s why I’m doing something scary. I am giving up most of my freelance copywriting business and discontinuing any publishing on Medium.
Where I used to work on a variety of projects with mostly startups and software companies, I am now only working with creative businesses and people who are passionate about using their business to make the world a better place. I am also severely limiting the services I offer.
These changes are going to drastically cut my income in the short term. But it will increase my happiness, help me be a better parent, and free up some time to build the thing my heart has been yearning for me to do for more than a decade.
I’m spending as much time as possible building my creative career. I’m writing and drawing more. I will be publishing more books and zines, trying new marketing ideas, and making this newsletter a better experience for you.
I will continue to stumble and fail along the way.
I hope you will continue to be patient with me!
I have made some changes to the Weirdo Poetry website. I now have a section about my creative side quests and one about my freelancing. You can click here to check out the changes.
Lastly, I was forced to rebrand my haiku poetry comic zine. The series is now called Surreal Haiku. If you have one of the zines under the Haiku Pop brand you have a collector’s item. The first two issues of Surreal Haiku are available in ebook and print. Links are on Weirdo Poetry.
If you are a paying member, you will be getting free ebook versions of both issues later today.
Whew!
That’s enough of an info dump for one newsletter! Be sure to watch your email for Wednesday’s issue.
Thanks for reading!
Be the weird you want to see in the world!
Thanks,
Jason
Testing 1…2
I really identify with being stretched too thin. I keep trying to figure out how to work smarter to fit everything in as there is nothing I'm currently able/willing to give up.