New and Old and All That

Hi hello!

This is coming to you in a slightly different format than I’ve used for years of sending this Friday (um, occasionally Saturday) email. But the words are all mine, and I hope you’ll get used to it quickly.

I can’t make this new email program I’m using personalize things so you’re greeted by name, though. Sorry about that. I am thinking exactly of you as I write this.

Well.

2020 was a ripe and colourful shit show, which is a terrible way to describe a year involving such extraordinary pain and death. 2021 is shaping up to be just as unpredictably prone to setting itself on fire, and I can’t yet express in words my reaction to more death, violence and hatred, so I’m going to just sum up the last year and my hopes for the coming year.

In the last year, I lost almost all of my income, got a fair chunk of it back through none of my own doing, teamed up with a business partner to start a company I love, endured a deeply painful and stressful spring at home, haven’t seen my parents at all, and developed one of the best friendships I’ve had in my adult life. And that was all just in our tiny corner of living. Staying in touch with all that went on in the greater world was at turns crushing, hopeful, despairing, gutting, beautiful, heartbreaking and enraging.

2021 is proving to be its own kind of challenge, and I intend for this Friday newsletter to be mostly about the beauty of making things, writing, trying to see things from different angles, and being creative in any way even when everything around us is painful. This newsletter can’t be an oasis where pain and cruelty don’t exist, because I can’t pretend that I live in a world devoid of those things. But it can be a place where I shine a light on things that bring me hope and joy, and I hope it’ll bring you hope and joy as well.

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You may recall that last fall I started a publishing company and an online magazine. I love this new work I’m doing — it’s editorial and Canadian and wooly and textiley and it turns out that I am in very real love with being in charge along with my business partner who shares my commitment to working from home in comfy clothes. If you’ve been with me for a long time, you know I’ve spent the last several years muddling through what my career even is or should be, so this newfound clarity is very welcome and it’s almost a revelation, I’ll tell you what.

This clarity and work, however, are forcing me to take a full account of all the work I’ve done in the last decade, what’s still around, and what I can do with it given that my time is now entirely dedicated to this new job. There are apps and services I’ve been paying for, which have served and still serve the various projects and programs I’ve run over the years, which need to be shut down or replaced because they’re no longer helping to generate income to warrant their use; if I don’t change things around, my finances will end up in a very big hole.

Hence this new email format — my soon-to-be-old email platform costs $80/month US! But also, this new email system is really exciting in a couple of ways.

First, it will create an archive of this newsletter that’s accessible online. My soon-to-be-old email program doesn’t keep an archive of the hundreds of emails I’ve sent through it, and saving that archive is going to take time (at least another $80 month or two). Crying shame for the archive-inclined.

Second, like the halcyon blog days of old, there’s a comment feature on the web-based emails and posts. And here’s the thing about comments and this newsletter. Did you know that I routinely hear from folks who reply to the Weekly Digest? I do, and I love it; it’s part of why this weekly ritual is one of my favourites.

And did you know what the vast majority of folks who hit reply are replying about? It’s not my deeply relatable prose, a constant humbling reminder. No, it’s the very last thing I write about every week, which is what my kid and I are reading.

Now, call me presumptuous, but I have a suspicion that folks who enjoy replying to me about books may also enjoy chatting with other creative types about books. So I’m very excited about this commenting feature. I will explore ways of using it beyond the Weekly Digest to see if we might enjoy having a bookish post or even a crafty post to chat in the comments about, like we used to get to know people with similar interest back when blogs were the engine of online socializing. I think this could be great fun, a simple and lovely respite from the chaos of the *waves hands*.

Third and finally, this new email program allows for paid subscriptions. Which provides me an opportunity to consolidate all the ways I’ve tried and mostly failed to make a living doing original works of writing, teaching, and community-building into the one thing I’ve succeeded at doing: writing to you every week.

But more on this last thing another time. The option is there if you want it, and yes, I am vaguely implying something I will now make explicit: I will soon be shutting down my Patreon and other ways of supporting my work in a monthly fashion. It’s too much for me to manage and I’ve been doing a terrible job at it, and you deserve better and I deserve to let go of obligations I can no longer meet.

These Friday(ish) emails will keep coming no matter what. Folks who sign on to support my writing will be able to leave comments and chat with other folks who enjoy the things we enjoy. If I ever manage to do some more audio work like a wee informal podcast, you’ll get that too, through this same system.

For now, I will be relaxing into finally starting to sort out the mess of professional work I created over a decade, as I settle into starting this next decade doing what, if I’m honest with myself, I wish I’d been doing all along.

However terrifying, painful, isolating, and worrying life is in this moment in history, I hope that we help each other to see the bits of light shining through the darkness.

“There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”

Onward.
Kim

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Items of Note

• I’ll repeat the link to the article about that line from Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem”. This song is the one I lost my shit to when Cohen died just as Trump was elected four years ago. It apparently took him ten years to write it.

• Now that my home office is almost in order, and I have a dedicated spot for sewing, it’s time to get back to what I started a year ago and stopped because the world fell apart: learning to use my serger. I think I’ll dive into this, because I cut my hair (myself) and I can’t decide if I want to grow it longer again or keep it short, but no matter what I’m going to need to tame it or hide it with some fabric more often than not.

• Love this so much. 😻🧶🎥

• Commentary.

• Crucial thread. (Twitter link)

What I’m making: The beginnings of a moose embroidery, and the beginnings of the second sleeve of a sweater.

What I’m watching: Brooklyn Nine Nine, for the deadpan humour I have desperate need for these days.

What I’m reading: I just finished Love Lettering, by Kate Clayborn, last night, and it was cute. I’ve started a book my friend lent me months ago, The Other Mrs., by Mary Kubica. The first page hasn’t impressed me, but I’ll stick with it for a bit. Over winter break, the kid and I read The One and Only Bob, by Katherine Applegate, which we both enjoyed, but not nearly as much as The One and Only Ivan, which is a masterpiece. I’ve already added a book to my DNF (did not finish) pile in 2021: This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. It was just too much. I was surprised to almost meet my goal of reading 40 books in 2020, given how much time I spent staring at walls when I couldn’t muster the energy to engage with anything at all. I think I read 38, so pretty great, all things considered. Looking back in my spreadsheet, I see that I read almost nothing in September and October – I didn’t realize till later that I was crushed by existential dread, but there you have it. The data don’t lie. I’m going to try to have more audiobooks in my life this year. We’ll see. Hey, click over to the newsletter site and leave a comment with what you’ve been reading, want to read, couldn’t finish. Let’s get this conversation going!