Monday, January 04, 2021

Is Heckasac a SubStack now? Good idea? Bad idea?

The New Yorker had an article about SubStack. I subscribe to a couple SubStack newsletters, and I pay for at least one of them (not sure about the other, I subscribe to so many apps and services that I can't keep them straight). The article got me thinking maybe I could do a SubStack newsletter to roll into the second decade of Heckasac.

Here are the problems

1) not interactive. you can do comment threads but that's not the same. but I should admit that with the exception of the weird spam in the last post and Cody's very welcome comment, that Heckasac is largely not interactive either and 

2) the SubStack newsletters I get always feel like somewhat of a drag to read, like a chore or something. They are both food-related, and both good, but for some reason having them in my inbox on a schedule I don't control makes it feel more like a to-do read than a pleasure

So yeah, probably won't do it? We'll see. I love the idea that I started Heckasac because The New Yorker explained to me what blogs are and then I could move onto another platform for the same reason! It's still my main way to find out about many things.

I'm currently in 3 book clubs. One is a neighborhood one reading White Fragility. We had our first meeting I think it went ok. I've organized a previous, work-based book club for this same book but this iteration is my first time with a non-white person in the group. That makes the discussion just a little different because so much of that book is "white people, stop doing this shit" but I am thoroughly excited and engaged to have the convo with a non-white person as well, with also not wanting to put extra pressure on them as far as the group dynamics

My other book club is reading Luster by Raven Leilani. It's actually not a great book club book because it's compulsively readable and it's also short, so some of the group had read over half of the book before we even convened and now we are already done and we just started! Next time maybe we'll read Ulysses, ha.

This post is boring me so I won't go into the third book club, suffice to say that it's an attempt to keep up the only friendship I have made during quar.

Now that the holidays are over, my year stretches out as a featureless blob. I am looking forward to eating Dungeness crabs in the backyard with one friend soon. I have an April camping trip planned that hopefully can still happen, but bummer we probably won't be vaccinated by then.  Oh yeah, and inauguration day to get rid of the creep.