Wow, a Summer Update - #67
I have returned from a summer of fun. And an unproductive August. Tomorrow is the equinox and it’s time to update you all on the state of this newsletter. With trite phrases included, like:
- A clean blog is a happy blog.
- Travel broadens the mind.
- I’m a new man.
Shit like that.
From mid-June to early-August, I traveled to Texas, Costa Rica, Spain, and France. First took a plane to Texas where I met up with family, then went to Costa Rica, and saw more family. My mother and I had a fun time roadtripping through the beach towns of the Nicoya Peninsula. Then said goodbye to Mom, and went from San José to Bilbao. Camped on a mountain for a three-day concert, and soon met up with my step-cousin in the Basque countryside. Stumbled into the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona. Partied! Saw running of the bulls! Then backpacked through pueblos till I arrived at the Pyrenees Mountains for an eight trek through a pretty valley. Hit Zaragoza, reached Barcelona, and relaxed in Costa Brava. Bags were robbed at a bus stop cafe – lost everything but my wallet, phone, and camping gear. Back to Barcelona for a new passport, then got to Girona. Hiked across the border of France in my flip flops. Once in Cerbère, I recalled a tip to visit Nîmes. Did that, then daytripped Montpellier. Saw Paris for only a few days. Hopped on a budget plane from Paris to LA. Arrived in my apartment sweaty.
Memorable people dotted the voyage, like the old man who told us about the sea turtles. Or the bus driver who ate sandwiches full of flies. The girl I met in Colombia who I met again near Barcelona. The Parisians I played card games with till 4am. The Costa Brava crew, the tan Ukrainians, and the one very calm American. All interesting individuals, especially the many writers I encountered. I don’t have room here to mention everyone on the trail or this would be a novel. So if you’re reading this, I remember you.
Now, this isn’t a travel blog. Yes, you come back from a wild experience like this and sit in your apartment for a month wondering how you could relive that nomadic high, but you have forgotten that a ton of these people have subscribed to your newsletter. I mean, you did tell everyone from the church steps to the midnight train that you, “write this… thing.” “You do… what? What is it?” “There’s a link on my IG. It’s a newsletter.” These strangers subscribed. Without hesitation. “I can’t wait to read it!” some said.
And they’ve waited. They gave me their email – me, a 20-something “cowboy from Texas” who lives and works in the far off land of “Hollywood“ – and forgot the next minute, returning to their conversation and couscous.
Until today. When they all just got this email. Hello.
I’d be lying if I said this didn’t influence me to take a hard look at this lark. Shoot The Sh*t has been happening in some form since September 2019. Which can only mean one thing: happy birthday. Time for a small renovation. A move that every LA girl might call, “very Virgo.”
Substack – “your services are no longer needed.” I joined their platform in 2020 when I started hating Wordpress, which admittedly, took three days. Nobody knew what Substack was at the time. And although its usability was hindered by a clunky UI and complicated formatting, it was still the best all-in-one newsletter platform than anything out there. Substack has since grown and today, journalists, pundits, anti-vaxxers, angsty poets, your friend who’s a travel blogger, everyone! They all have a Substack. And it’s annoying.
Call me a hipster (hits Reply: “hipster”), but I think Substack, as a platform, is prioritizing the recruitment of “famous writers” and them gaining “paid subscribers” than adding features that would allow the layman newsletter creator to have greater customization. And I had little interest in joining their “Substack community”. This isn’t a car meetup. God forbid a Twitter subculture. It’s a newsletter! It goes to your inbox, sometimes spam. Plus, I always wanted a custom URL and Substack sucked donkey doodle on making that happen. So here I am, on Bearblog, using Tinyletter.
Bearblog is a platform designed by Herman Martinus. You’re looking at a ~5kb page. “Very responsive website you got here,” you say? Well, thanks – it was a lot of work to enter my email and make an account.
What was toilsome was the migration of all my content from Substack to Bearblog. Each post, one at a time, copying and pasting the Markdown text from an HTML converter. Making sure images and text lined up after each transfer. Some of this checking turned into reading, and it led me to becoming amazed by the quality of the early posts. Wow, I thought. So much inane shit.
Like, holy fuck. What in God’s name was I writing at the beginning? It was a plethora of anomalies, all glutted with jarring subject changes and barely digestible nonsense. The posts only became somewhat okay once I arrived to this year’s. And I’m not saying my writing is any good yet – just way better than 2019.
Maybe I have a new lens nowadays. Travel broadens the mind, of course, and I’m a new man because of it. I’ll try to keep the mess contained – you know what they say: a clean blog is a happy blog.
Okay, take care.
-Don
