the toa newsletter- june 2017

Hi all,

As I threatened predicted warned in my most recent proper admin post, my lifelong love of newsletters has won out over my stated intent to stick to a posting schedule. Hope nobody minds seeing an extra post at the start of each month to cover some basic admin and set the stage for what's coming up on the blog.

The only thing on my mind at the moment is how I am going to approach related posts- let's call them series. In the past, I tried to publish these posts consecutively and/or give them obviously related titles to emphasize the similar or continuous content.

I am going to get away from that method for future cases. I think the best reason for this is to prevent myself from allowing boring topics to take over the space for an extended length of time to emphasize variety in the writing that I put up.

Of course, I am thinking about series because I have a number of them in the works. 'The Final Exam', which started up last week, gets into what it was like to become a soccer fan in the USA. I have some ideas about writing and proofreading that will get going at the end of June. And I hope to finish multi-post works in progress about hospice volunteering, chess, and Hillbilly Elegy before I trick someone into hiring me before we get too deep into the summer.

Thanks for reading in May.

Tim

Books I recently checked out that I'm excited to (someday) write about...

The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes

I've read a couple of Taubes's books in the past. I remember his books being interesting but a little exhausting. In these cases, I'm always happy to see an author release a new book so that I have an excuse to avoid re-reading the old ones.

I hope one day people say this about my posts- or at the very minimum, the last part.

The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit

I got about twenty pages into this one when I had an unusual thought- books like this make me grateful that I learned to read. In terms of my expectations for this blog, I'm a little skeptical- I've read a couple of Solnit's works in the past and found that I rarely have anything even half-insightful to add. She's good.

In the next month of...True On Average...

1) I write about how a walk I took was actually not so profound after all.

2) I fire my alter ego.

3) I pick up a part-time job digging for coal.

A couple of ideas that may or may not become posts...

*How to win at pachinko
*The Ivy League conspiracy to drive up tuition bills
*We must cross the threshold of life and death alone

And of course, my ten thousand word opus on the importance of Ricky Rubio continues. Don't know who he is? Don't care.

See you in June!

-June 2017