Savour one thing

I'm a fan of curated newsletters. Anything that shared articles, apps, videos, websites—it didn't matter. If I found one that interested me, I'd sign up.

It's the same reason I started sharing my own links with this newsletter. I believed that interesting, helpful links were worth sharing.

But lately, I've grown tired of it.

I've been unsubscribing to newsletters, and as you know, I quit sharing links.

But why?

It was too much

There were too many articles to read through. Too many apps to try. And always, always, always, never enough time.

It turned me into a consumption machine.

I was so busy reading things and researching for my newsletter that I wasn't doing my creative writing work.

The most frustrating thing is that none of it seemed to last. I never spent time with any of it or tested its ideas out. I never savoured it before I moved on to the next thing. I felt no resonance.

Revisiting Kowal

I did something new on my daily blogs this past month that I hadn't done before. Every day for a week, I revisited a Mary Robinette Kowall quote:

What's the smartest thing my character could do to get to the next stage? How does it go terribly, terribly wrong?

It may not resonate with you, but it did for me, so I considered it. Every day, I'd think I was done and revisit it the next day and discover more.

It impacted my thinking, and I even carried it into my teaching, sharing it with some of my students.

Writing about it daily and sharing it with the world allowed me to slow down, take notice, and think about what I'd read.

Fish

Since I found value in considering one thing for a week, I think it might be fun to consider one thing for an entire month.

One recommendation—an article, a book, an app, or something else—that resonates with me and, hopefully, will resonate with you.

So today, I'm recommending the app Fish by Robin Sloan. I got this for my phone years ago and have repeatedly gone back to it over the years. And it is very relevant to this newsletter.

It's a visual essay on why we should spend extra time with the things we love on the internet. Return to them. Savour them. Don't toss them aside before moving on to the next thing.

I don't open it often, but I'm constantly reminded of its lesson when I do. I hope it resonates for you as much as it has for me.

Fish by Robin Sloan