Welcome to The Octopus and The Ant

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Hi folks, I’m back. I acknowledge that I didn’t really go anywhere, but my online writing has been sparse these past few months (and years). If I am going to be such a slacker, you probably ask, then why am I starting a newsletter? There are a couple of reasons but mainly I’ve managed to finish some long commitments (PTA Board for four years - why God why?) and I’m determined to fill the time with writing. I decided to create a newsletter because blogs are too passive.

With the rise (and fall) of social media, people don’t go to different websites to find their “content.” They want it delivered to them. My old newsletter did that but didn’t really have a “blog” component where new people could discover me. My Medium page charged people money to read my stuff and two of my most important readers (my husband and my mom) thought it was an annoying hassle.

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Not wanting to piss off my most loyal readers, I launched The Revenge of Scobie, an offspring of my old blog, St. Scobie’s Mock Whiskey. That blog started when I was pregnant with a child who turns 20 this year. The cat it was named after passed away that long ago. RIP Scobie. But again, The Revenge was passive. It sits there, waiting for people to visit.

The name of this newsletter, The Octopus and The Ant, is taken from my two tattoos, which are, well, you can probably guess. The Octopus, to Aristotle, was a universal form embodying the mind (the head, also the phlegmatic humor), the five senses, and the three other humors (eight legs; the melancholic, choleric, and sanguine humors). At least, that’s what I deduced in college, inspiring me to get an octopus tattoo. The Ant represents hard work and service to one’s community.

So what will this newsletter be “about”? Interesting question. In fact, when I signed up to launch this newsletter, Substack asked me the same question. But I didn’t start it to be “about” anything in particular. In fact, this morning I was reading Dinner: A Love Story and Rangelife (two newsletters I recommend) and thinking about how often women’s blogs are about food and books and travel and parenting while men’s blogs are about politics and news and ideas. Obviously, that’s not a hard and fast rule, but I wanted to write a newsletter that’s about all those things and anything else that’s on my mind, just like I did when I started St. Scobie’s Mock Whiskey back in the waning years of the Bush II era.

Those of you who’ve patiently followed me from platform to platform may be wondering: How do I know this is the one? Frankly, I don’t. But I’ve created a post-it note that says, “Post newsletter at least two times a month on Wednesdays between May 17 and the end of August.” I’ve placed that post-it note in a prominent place where I will see it regularly, and as a former Catholic, I will feel guilty any time I am not fulfilling that random unnecessary duty to its fullest. My hope is that three and a half months will be long enough to get some momentum going so that I can build up your trust.

I’m happy to be back at it, and I hope you will stick with me and share my newsletter with others.

Thanks for reading The Octopus and The Ant! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.