Is This Good-bye, or See You Later?
Dear readers of The Friday Five,
First, thank you so much for subscribing, reading, commenting and otherwise giving me great feedback on The Friday Five, my small experiment in keeping a regular newsletter. To be honest, it did much better than I expected — which made it all the harder for me to make this decision: I am officially discontinuing The Friday Five, at least for now.
I started this as a way to be more mindful of the content I was consuming. It gave me a reason to pay more attention, in that I felt responsible to report back to you at the end of each week something about what I learned or was inspired by. While in this sense it was a success, it also started to pull me away from other things that needed my time. Ironically, it made me spend more time on social media as I tried to find worthy content to report back to you about! (that Industry News section almost killed me with most issues!)
Anyway, I don’t like ghosting, so this is me just letting you know I did not take my helmet off in outer space or dress up as a moose during mating season (either of which would be very embarrassing, and dumb, and very passe ways of dying).
So this is, well, goodbye for now, and maybe I’ll see you later.
What Happens Next?
Many of you subscribed to this Substack specifically for The Friday Five. I understand that if I’m no longer giving you that, you might not want to stick around. The question is, if you do, what will you be getting out of the deal?
Well, I can promise you this: you will be getting fewer emails from me. I will be reverting back to my previous schedule of bi-weekly podcast episode announcements for Thoughts on Illustration, plus intermittent and strictly necessary communiqués.
I’m not saying I won’t bring back the Friday Five, I’m just saying it’s off my plate for a while. Stick around if you’d like to see what happens next, or, if you’d like, there’s an unsubscribe link near the very bottom of this email. No hard feelings!
Okay, that’s all. Thanks again for reading, and if you’re sticking around, thanks for sticking around.
Have a great weekend!
Tom
I truly enjoyed reading The Friday Five every week, but I also get you! It's probably not to the same degree, but I feel similarly when I find myself scrolling through social media just to have some interesting post or meme to send to my friend group chat 😅 I'm really grateful for the thought and effort you've put into it all this time, and I commend your decision to take a step back for your own well-being. I still look forward to whatever you'll put out in the future, even if they're just random musings or insights you'd like to share, and of course, the podcast! A gazillion thanks again for all your wonderful work :)
Sounds like a wise choice, especially if it's getting you spending more time on social media rather than focusing the time you already spend there.
Friday Five is particularly structured... I would, personally, find it incredibly hard to stick to it if it weren't more flexible (even sticking to 5 every time!).