One Year Undercover
Today marks one year since I started publishing Spyglass. This is the 665th post.1 That's... a lot. Of course, all posts are not created equal and as I laid out from the get-go, my general three-pronged approach – blog, column, newsletter – has served me well over the past year. Each aspect has morphed a bit, and the various content types have ebbed and flowed in terms of volume, but each helped me achieve a key goal I had for the year: to write myself back into shape.2
For year two, I'm going to change things up a bit. Nothing too drastic, but more so an acknowledgement that my "sea legs" are back, as it were, and I'm back to being fully confident in my writing capabilities after years away from the day-to-day activity. So for this second year, at least to start, I'm going to focus more on longer-form writing.
That's not to say longer writing, necessarily. But prose more in the style of a column, regardless of length. I'll still do some quicker, more timely blogging as inspiration strikes (and it will, quite often, I suspect) but a focus on writing one great thing a day (at least on weekdays) is the challenge I'm giving myself.
What that means for you, dear reader, depends on your level of participation with Spyglass. If you just read on the website – which is now far more people than I originally suspected, but I suppose a growing corpus of work will naturally do that – you probably won't notice much, if any changes. Ditto if you read via RSS.3
If you read Spyglass through email, things will shift a bit depending on your tier/preferences. Those who choose to get every post sent via email – aka 'One More Ring' (not on by default, but also far more people than I suspected, which is why I had to set it up) – things also shouldn't be much different. But if you're either an 'Outer Ring' (free) or 'Inner Ring' (paid) subscriber, things will look a bit different.
For 'Outer Ring' members, you'll now get one email a week featuring the aforementioned longer-form writing. The plan is to send this on Mondays, but I may shift this over time, largely determined by the content itself. And that's in part because 'Inner Ring' members will get such content sent daily during weekdays. Said another way: I'll pick one (perhaps sometimes two) of these columns a week to send to everyone, while paid members will get something every day.
To make room for this change, and so as not to inundate your inboxes (unless you're one of the beloved 'One More Ring' subscribers) I will be putting the 'Spyglass Dispatch' – the daily newsletter – on hiatus.
I've gone back and forth on this over the past many weeks. It took a few iterations – what started as a weekly roundup, shifted to daily almost six months ago, and morphed into its current form about three months ago – but it's now in a place where it's clearly resonating with people, as the many messages I receive about it can attest (thank you). At the same time, it's a lot of work. And while I don't mind that at all – I actually really enjoy putting it together – it does make it quite a bit harder to do any other kind of writing. And again, that's my goal for the year so...
Honestly, one key thing that pushed me over the edge about the change has been the past few weeks of news, which feels like it's quickly shifting (back) to the absurd with the change in US administrations. I can only write so many jokes when the jokes are writing themselves. And a lot of this stuff is just fucking stupid. And (hopefully) quite temporary. The Dispatch was working for me (and hopefully for you) because it was basically my near real-time notebook on what I was reading. It was helping me form my own thoughts and opinions on a wide-range of topics. All while restoring the writing muscle memory. With the latter now in a good spot, I don't feel the need to waste too much time and brainpower reading about and thinking about nonsense. When the nonsense stops, I suspect the Dispatch will return, in one form or another.
At the same time, there remains so many impactful and important things to write about in tech, particularly as AI continues to rise and permeate basically every aspect of life. I'd just prefer to do that in longer form.
So that's the plan for year two of Spyglass. Undoubtedly there will be some tweaks along the way, but the reaction to and reception of year one has been awesome – truly above and beyond – and gives me the push to continue down the path...
M.G. Siegler
1 The next post will carry the number of the beast -- which may or may not have something to do with Nero (the number, not the post).
2 This writing cadence has also gotten my brain back into shape in a way that I understood conceptually, but could only fully appreciate in practice. I just feel like I have far more clarity of thought around many things. And all of this has had secondary benefits as well. More on that another time...
3 Basically since day one of The Inner Ring I've gotten questions about a paid RSS feed. I promise that I've done a ton of work and research on this, but I haven't quite come up with the right solution yet. I know there are some third-party options, but I'd prefer to keep it simple and clean. So for now it remains on the roadmap, but it's very top of mind, especially as more posts get sent to The Inner Ring under the year two plan.