Excalicauldron: And on the 7th Day, She Took Pause and Bid a Momentary Farewell - Issue #7
Hello, goodbye 👋🎶
I deliberated till the last minute over what to write in this week's newsletter, and the answer came as an ending.
February will be a month of enormous changes for me. I'm changing countries again after over 2 years of being covid-stuck in a single one. Business-wise, there are big-huge things happening throughout the month. A close-knit group of people I've spent large amounts of time with collectively and bonded deeply with individually over the past 1.5 years is coming to a formal close. The themes of death and rebirth blanket my internal skies.
The Initial Excalicauldron Why
The intention with which I started this newsletter is no longer as applicable as it was six issues ago. I needed to get off Facebook yet maintain a space to stay connected. What these past few issues have taught me is that a newsletter is not a replacement for social media. The instant gratification of liking and commenting cannot really be replicated here, at least not unless we practice rather radical behavioural change. The overarching power of social media monoliths seems a wicked problem to which there are no simple answers.
As I move to new countries, Facebook groups will once again become destination stations, and with it, Facebook usage will probably creep back in. So despite my (many) misgivings, I'll readily admit that there's a utility in social media that's hard to transplant elsewhere.
As we wrap up our temporary lives in Viet Nam, I celebrate, grieve, and lay to rest what has been. Simultaneously, I look forward to the prospect of a rich newness to infuse my life, that can only come from complete immersion in an entirely new culture.
Where to Next
Some of you have requested that I document the upcoming journey, which ties in with the same request so many of my friends have made over the years, to capture in long-form writing what I used to muse about on Facebook posts.
My hesitations are rife:
1. What business have I, with my Privilege Pass, to talk as if I know and understand a place? This is a gift long-term travel has brought me: Shutting up to listen for a long time rather than infer my own meaning....which is a hard thing to embrace for a meaning-maker :)
2. Seriously, travel?! Google it. Read someone's digital nomad blog. I'm not the travel writer type - I take photos of rusty old doors and forget to visit the major tourist attractions.
3. Long-form is dead, and I need no additional encouragement to spill verbosity onto the page.
I'm an easy victim of the crushing weight of output fatigue brought on by blogs and newsletters. My digital writing yard is littered with the bones of stillborn writing projects. And a die-hard marketing mindset certainly doesn't help, a devilish whisper that X number of posts at X word count is an arcane formula to produce a GPS signal for that elusive pot of gold at rainbow's end.
This has always been an easier thing for me to circumvent because I'm the kind they warn you against: I have no KPIs. I don’t write this because I have anything to sell or even much to say. Which begs the question, why a blog? How come a newsletter? I have no good answer to that question. It's not meant to funnel anything anywhere. Instead, it serves a limited containment function. A snapshot of myself in a particular space and time, which I - for the seventh time, this issue - float out into the wide expanse of space, ceasing to keep track of it as soon as I press publish.
Pop-up Newsletters
So when I came across an essay by Craig Mod on pop-up newsletters, I realised what I'd been missing: Limited edition output.
Newsletters, like people, come into our lives for reasons or seasons and, also like people, very seldom for life. I loathe having to commit to a writing project with no end in sight, and I dislike expecting the same from my reader audience.
Excalicauldron Is Expectant
Therefore, Excalicauldron will transition from a weekly(ish) incarnation to something a lot more infrequent. Mod talks about having an ur-newsletter. This is akin to a space station connecting a core audience to all the different planets happening within one's writing universe, and maybe Excalicauldron is or becomes that for me. So you might still hear from me every so often, but it will be plotted on a randomness scatter-graph. If and when it happens, it'll poof! just appear in your inbox. Alternatively, it might follow the same fate as Blue Squirrel, which is yet to be woken from cryosleep.
Moving on, I am starting a new, seasonal newsletter, for as long as I'll be living in my next destination. The idea of fostering baby newsletters for a time appeals more than the prospect of a Till Death Do Us Part pact. Sign up and you're in effect signing on the dotted line saying that we begin at the beginning knowing we’ll go our separate ways again after a time, that you’re not signing your email address away for a lifelong commitment of me in your inbox, but that you and I are both free to follow the trails of our choosing and that sometimes our paths may verge and sometimes not. Alternatively, if you stay only here on this list, I’ll see you out in orbit from time to time. Go well into this last week of January, my friends 💖
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My Obsidian Vaultiverse Showcase
P.S. In other news, since I’m on an eternal quest to harvest new Obsidian converts (can I just be hired as a brand evangelist already?!), a showcase I did with Nick Milo from Linking Your Thinking - my personal PKM hero - about my Obsidian vault(iverse) is on YouTube. I recorded it months ago and, rerunning it, the person I was then came to greet who I am now in what was a lovely reunion. It showed me a way paved towards the hypnagogic liminality I wrote about in Issue 3 and Interstitial, my 2022 Word of the Year.
One of the comments on the YouTube video made me chuckle as a pretty apt description of my personality 😁
This is completely weird. Delightfully weird! It's not for me, but it was a great watch. Definitely outside the box.
Where to from here?? Will we meet again?