Let's Try This Again

Good Ones was once a thrice weekly music newsletter, and Big Drinks was to be a more in depth newsletter covering what people like to drink. The Big Drinks newsletter is now being rebranded as Good Ones, and the old Good Ones feed is still available here, though it won’t be updated. Read on in this newsletter to hear more bout this format change, and decide if you want to stay subscribed.

Once More, With Feeling

When I originally got my Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis, it was difficult to type. Multiple Sclerosis is a disease where your immune system attacks your brain, or optic nerve, or spinal column, and one of the main symptoms is loss of fine motor control and numbness. Even now, well into treatment and well after my last flare up, I still have some tingling and loss of sensation in my fingertips. While it doesn’t prevent me from typing, it does make the whole process less comfortable than it used to be.

Both my newsletters were originally formed as content factories with rigid schedules and frequent publishing dates. They were great exercises in forcing myself to write, but I found the work often suffered. Good Ones entries were often rushed and only really touched on the surface of each song’s background, and Big Drinks newsletters were ambitious in trying to rope together multiple interviews while tying a narrative through line into them.

That doesn’t mean I’m not proud of those newsletters, or that I think they were all subpar. In fact, here’s a list of newsletters from Good Ones I particularly liked:

I also liked a lot of the work from Big Drinks:

One of the main issues I kept running into with Big Drinks was a lack of expertise. My knowledge around coffee is much deeper and more thorough than any other specialty beverage, and those coffee focused newsletters ended up having many more rich threads to explore, along with better contacts for stronger interviews. While it probably would be possible to develop similar levels of expertise in the other fields, it would also require much, much more background work, and it was becoming more and more difficult to be able to secure multiple interviews for one newsletter.

After my diagnosis — and getting through the first flare up — I found that I have a different approach to leisure. MS isn’t fatal, but I do live my life knowing that I’m at risk for a debilitating flare up at almost any moment, and while I enjoy having writings available in the world, I also want the process of creating those pieces to be equally enjoyable.

When I took the time to focus more on subjects that were appealing to me, and took the time to edit and revise those pieces, I found myself much more content with the quality of the writing and I found that I would get stronger responses from readers.

I had a piece about living with my diagnosis during the COVID-19 pandemic published on The Discontents newsletter:

But it was an essay about my love for Forged In Fire and naturally leavened bread that really changed course for me:

This essay really tied together what I thought my writing should be. It felt good writing it, it felt great revising it, and it was truly sublime to publish it and see the positive reactions it garnered.

So why not make them all like that?

Yeah, I know. That’s the plan.

As a “brand,” Good Ones seemed to be the best banner to re-launch my newsletter, with the goal of tying personal essays back into parts of culture that appeal to me. My hope is to draft these essays weekly, or maybe bi-weekly, but it’s hard to say what the schedule might look like.

In the meantime, I’m grateful you decided to subscribe when you did, and I hope you decide to stay subscribed, and I encourage you to take a look back at some of these newsletters I was fond of, and I hope to have a new issue out soon.

Artwork by Ashley Elander Strandquist. You can view her illustration work here and check out her printing business here.