Splash No. 233 - Another One
Another One
For 232 (and counting) editions of Splash, I’ve kept the same format — weekly newsletters that go out on Thursday at 11 AM ET consisting of an essay around 500 words and three recommendations, sent through Mailchimp, a service made for email marketing. Since I started this whole thing, newsletters have exploded in popularity, going from a weird niche thing for internet nerds like me and retailers that offered a new sale every day somehow to something as ubiquitous as blogs were in the aughts. The most popular newsletter tool, Substack, was founded the year I started writing Splash, and didn’t raise any money until the year after. This is all to say that I can take full credit for the newsletter boom and should be applauded endlessly for such massive accomplishments in the internet space.
In this time, as new platforms have popped up, I’ve been curious about what it would be like to explore other formats, whether that includes changing up my cadence or my style or my organization. I’m constantly surprised by how many of my subscribers actually open my emails, considering how difficult it is to sit down and actually read email most of the time. So, I’m starting a new newsletter called reflecting pool (because water, yaknow) — one that will use Substack, come out monthly, and likely be centered on what I’m consuming each month.
Lately, as Twitter has become unpredictable and confusing under new management, I’ve seen many people I respect start to engage with their Substack communities more intently, using the Substack chat feature and comments on their posts to engage. I’m interested in cutting back my Twitter usage, and a recommendations based newsletter seems like a cool way to do what I used to do on Twitter — share things that I really enjoyed.
Beyond that, I have larger reasons for wanting to do more — I wrote in a previous newsletter about how , and have been thinking about spending time more intentionally and creatively. By focusing my new newsletter on consumption, I’ll both have something to work on and also be forced to be more intentional about what I’m consuming, rather than my typical spirals into social media or YouTube recommendations that eat up my time after work.
And lastly, I’ve been reading Hua Hsu’s incredible memoir Stay True and am almost getting tired of highlighting passages, but this one stuck out:
Youth is a pursuit of this kind of small immortality. You want to leave something behind. Record a single and put it out in the world, the part of the world that never dies, granted new life in the used bins and secondhand shops. Nestle your zines and manifestos inside newspapers around campus, between the pages of magazines left behind in cafés, your words against theirs.
Newsletters are not zines, but at this point I feel most comfortable in email inboxes. Maybe passages from my writing will be screenshotted and fly around the web like messages in bottles floating across the sea. Perhaps the servers on Mailchimp and Substack will cease to work and my words will disappear into an abyss, only surviving in someone’s inbox a long time from now. Maybe none of that will happen, but it is about the pursuit and every word I publish is a step in that journey.
Splash will continue to come through every week as usual! I’m figuring out the details, and small changes might occur, but I intend to keep writing Splash for as long as possible.
Subscribe to reflecting pool if you wanna!
Drops of the Week
SOUNDTRACK - Persona 5 Soundtrack - it's too good
ARTICLE - "Breeding Contempt" by Mills Baker - interesting read into contempt and how we treat people. I was struck by the section including the line "the closer we are to someone, the more we treat them as we treat ourselves."
POEM - "Red Brocade" by Naomi Shihab Nye - When a stranger appears at your door, feed him for three days / before asking who he is
Donate to Abortion Funds Mutual Aid Networks
Thanks so much for reading! If you're not already subscribed, I'd love for you to subscribe here. You can also check out my older newsletters here.
Also, I'd love to hear your thoughts— you can reply to this email if you loved or hated the letter, or you want to tell me about how your day has been. I'm all ears.
Weekly (and more soon),
Nikhil