THIS HAS BEEN A LONG TIME COMING

The chances are that you have been receiving newsletter content from me for many years - maybe even over a decade. Perhaps the first email I sent you was in the form of a newsletter from a guitar dealership - bristling with links and teasers to gently (I hope) point your attention back towards a branded website that would be the first step in putting you in touch with your new guitar. 

Such letters are often formulaic - designed, and timed, to reach a receptive audience for purely mercantile ends. I've signed up to enough mailing lists over the years - I'm sure you have too - to see this outreach for what it is. 

More through lack of time than anything else, my own newsletters since leaving guitar retail nearly a decade ago have followed a similar format - albeit with the end goal being to invite you to watch my latest video, listen to a podcast I have hosted or read an article I have written. 

The fact that I have not used the newsletter format for over a year should be a hint as to just how disenchanted I am with this way of staying in touch with you. I'd like that to change - and I've been giving this a lot of thought. 

JUST FOR YOU

I remember speaking with a social media expert many years ago. It was a demoralising experience which hinted at untold misery to come - from automated drip email campaigns, deftly scripted to encourage a feeling that the company contacting you genuinely understood you as an individual, to AI chatbots and the nauseating concept of the 360 degree client view. 

One thing that I did retain from that stultifying exchange was the advice that each new platform that a company uses is “another mouth to feed” - and as such content type and style should be geared towards each delivery system. 

This newsletter was never intended as another mouth to feed - in fact I refuse to see it that way. I would like to use this as a way to share my thoughts with you in a long form format - a literal letter in fact. 

This may take the form of a generalised stream of consciousness, or a collection of thoughts on a specific theme. It will be whatever I choose to write about when the opportunity and the compulsion takes me. It will not be weekly, monthly - in fact it will be extremely irregular. 

My only rules are as follows:

• That I follow my intent to give you the best of me in this format
• This will be a self-contained letter - not a way to subvert your attention 
• What I share here will be for my newsletter subscribers only
• I will hold nothing back in terms of opinion and experience
• I will limit myself to one image per letter - as if I'd enclosed a photograph 
• I will never use AI to write this - or do anything else
• The only link I will ever add will be to my home page 
• This is about ideas and people not numbers - analytics can get f*cked

Finally -  I will not schedule the launch for a convenient and attention friendly time. It'll go as soon as I've finished writing. 

Which is now

I'll see you soon 

Michael