Oh God, It's Raining Newsletters — by Craig Mod

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2021-05-27 01:30:08

Email’s beginning was perfectly unremarkable: “QWERTYUIOP.” A keyboard burp. Something your cat might type. A nothing message sent by Ray Tomlinson in 1971 to test the system. But email has stayed, and has largely stayed decentralized, and from that — its ubiquity and lack of central authority — email has become one of the most boringly powerful publishing platforms around.

I fear we’re entering an era of newsletter fatigue, but a month ago I started a new one. It’s called Ridgeline, it’s about walking — the perambulatory, wandery version — through the mountains and old paths of Japan.

The newsletter is weekly, composed of a single photograph, and (usually, hopefully) no more than 500 words.1 It’s meant to be low-stress high-reward. An email you knock down in about a minute, scan quickly, mark as done. But I’ve written several of them so far, and I am incapable of abiding by these rules.

As to the primary topic: Japan has been my home base for the better part of my life, and I’ve compulsively walked bits and pieces of the country these past six years. I’m interested in the connection between this impulse and the boundless connectivity we’re all presently awash in.