I Started Something New: A Monthly Newsletter

It was during a walk in the woods on my last weekend of vacation that my vision for the newsletter content came up clearly in my head. I was ecstatic. I’m happy to report that I found most of my answers to this recent post. Here are the details surrounding this monthly newsletter.

The newsletter purpose

The purpose of my upcoming newsletter is to summarize a month’s worth of readings (mostly in the numeric world: the cyberspace), to highlight some of my own writing and a bit more. I’ll look back but also offer a glimpse of what I’m working on and the things I’ll be looking forward to the next month. The newsletter will touch all my passions: Apple, photography, privacy protection and climate change. If any of these subjects matter to you, you’ll likely want to subscribe! I hope you do. But, that’s not all.

How often you’ll get it?

It will be a monthly newsletter as I don’t want to overflow your inbox. I think this is the best frequency for this kind of content. I’m also considering the amount of work I will need to accomplish in order to meet the deadlines. I know they will come fast and I have a limited amount of hours that I can spend on this. I don’t want to burn myself while doing it or neglect the rest of my blogging work. So, there it is, a monthly newsletter. Expect the newsletter in the first week of every month. What’s more?

The name

How should I name this newsletter? It could be “The Numeric Citizen Report” or “The Numeric Citizen Newsletter”. But none of these are satisfying to me. I wanted something a bit different and related to being a citizen, someone, in a numeric space. What are people doing when they look back at their behaviours, their memories, their consciousness, their life? They do introspection. According to Wikipedia, here is a definition of the term introspection.

The examination of one’s own consciousthoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies exclusively on observation of one’s mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one’s soul. Introspection is closely related to human self-reflection and self-discovery and is contrasted with external observation.

It’s is about the discoveries. I like this a lot. Numeric Citizen Introspection Newsletter. There you have it. I’ve got the name. What’s left?

Working efficiently

In order to be as efficient as possible, I’ll be using all the tools available to me. I’m thinking of Mailbrew from which I get automatically generated newsletters from sources like Twitter, Reddit, and many RSS feeds. It’s a pretty cool tool. Trust me. Next, I’ll use Hey’s text clipping features to save interesting tidbits of information from these newsletters. Expect a few of my recently published photos or any other visual discoveries that are worth highlighting. To tie all this, I’ll be using Notion, my go-to place for organizing my numeric life. Oh, by the way, don’t miss my review of Notion. That’s all? One more thing.

How much will it cost?

That’s the burning question. Remember, I’m investing a lot in this adventure. I’m a serious blogger. I want to build something for the long run where a small community of regular readers will form. I hope to build trust between my readers and me. Finally, I wish my readers to wait anxiously for their newsletter to come in, each month. But, I have to prove that I can do it and that will be worth it: both for you, and for me. So here the thing. For the time being, the newsletter will be free. Yep. Free.

Each month, I’ll put together the best newsletter I can. It will improve over time. And I hope to get feedback from my readers. I’ll see over the coming months how well it is received and how much traction it is gaining. If this thing doesn’t fly, then, so be it. Otherwise, if it gets off the ground, then I’ll see. I won’t be greedy. I promise. To conclude, here is a quote from Benedict Evans:

I understand it rationally, but it still feels weird that the immediate feedback you get from setting an email newsletter is a bunch of people unsubscribing.

Well, hoping my experience will be different.

Final note to my readers

The newsletter is not taking over this blog or anything else. Don’t worry. But, expect to find things in the newsletter that won’t be published here. A newsletter is a different medium and requires different type of content. Sure there will be some similarities but I want to give my newsletter its own “personality”.

Lastly, I’m still experiencing Substack as a writing and publishing platform. Expect to read a review here in the coming weeks.

Now, do me a favour, have a look at https://numericcitizen.substack.com and subscribe, again, it’s free! The first issue is coming tomorrow on September 5th, 2020.