The beginning is the end is the beginning
I’ve launched and relaunched some version of this newsletter at least three times. At first, it was about food. And then it was about technology. I even thought I’d publish a new issue every day during CES 2023. That did not come to pass. I was too ambitious or not ambitious enough. Either way, my biggest failure is that I wasn’t consistent. And the thing about newsletters — and podcasts and exercise and diets — is that consistency is key.
One of the things I found most difficult to pin down was the subject of the newsletter itself. Back when I had the idea of a newsletter, a good friend of mine said I should use it to write essays or reports on tech companies, like the kind I used to write for Engadget. Which is certainly an option, but without a “real” publication backing my name, it’s difficult to get interviews and quotes and do any real reporting. I could of course turn to researching secondary sources, but I didn’t know if I had the time or energy to do that after working a full eight hours at my actual day job.
The reason I had this quandary in the first place is that there has been a general trend going around journalism where established journalists, tired of the yoke of corporate America and not having a lot of job security, have taken upon themselves to launch their own newsletters, sometimes to great acclaim. Examples include Casey Newton’s Platformer, Molly Knight’s The Long Game and Judd Legum’s Popular Information. For some, the newsletter has risen beyond simply a personal project to a full-blown publication with actual staff.
This trend placed an invisible pressure on me, as I wondered if I too had the reputation, the tenacity and the gumption necessary to have a newsletter where readers could pay me directly for the words I write. That is certainly the dream of any writer, be it journalist or novelist or columnist.
That, however, ended up with me wanting my newsletter to be this grandiose thing. It resulted in the aforementioned false starts, the reticence to even launch anything in the event that nobody reads it, and a huge imposter syndrome where I think to myself I’m not much of a journalist and that I’m not famous enough to have a readership and an audience.
So I decided to rethink why I wanted a newsletter in the first place. The truth is, I simply wanted an avenue to express my opinions and thoughts on a variety of topics and to share what has been going on in my life. If that sounds like a blog, well, it is. Except this blog arrives in your inbox on a regular schedule.
Once I reframed my newsletter as a blog, the fog began to lift from my eyes. I looked to other personal newsletters like Ed Yong’s The Ed’s Up and Charlie Jane’s Happy Dancing and felt inspired to launch something similar.
So here it is. The rebirth of a rebirth of a rebirth of a newsletter. I’m calling it Nicole’s Lee-tle Newsletter because it’s ultimately a silly little personal thing. I’m aiming to publish at least one issue a week, though you might get more than one on occasion. It’s also free as a bird, but if you feel like supporting me, there’s an optional monthly subscription that you can pay to offset my hosting costs (Buttondown is a great platform but it’s not free. If you’re wondering why I stepped away from Substack, here’s why).
I hope you’ll join me on this journey. I’m looking forward to it!
What I've been watching
This is a hopefully-recurring segment where I write about the latest TV shows / movies etc that I've been consuming. These won't be exhaustive reviews; just brief descriptions and whether or not I recommend them.
The Devil's Plan on Netflix
This is a Korean reality game show where a group of supposedly high-intelligence individuals are placed in a secluded building and then have to compete against each other in a series of puzzles in order to win a large sum of prize money. The day is divided into two matches: The main match, where each player competes for the most gold pieces, and the prize match, where players have to work together to increase the prize pool (the prize starts at $0 but has the potential of up to 500 million won). The show is surprisingly complex, with games that are a mix of social engineering, math and logic. I don't know if there'll be a US audience for this, but I personally really enjoy it.
Ahsoka on Disney+
I want to say upfront that I have not watched Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels so I have no idea who these characters were before watching this show. I suspect that I'm not the only one. And yet, I enjoyed this show immensely. It certainly has its weak points -- the earlier episodes were a little slow-moving and the ending didn't have the payoff I was expecting -- but I still liked it. Ray Stevenson as Baylan Skoll is a revelation and it's an absolute tragedy that he didn't live long enough to see the fans' reaction to his performance. I also enjoyed Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Sabine Wren and Ivanna Sakhno as Shin Hati, not to mention Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Hera. This show is rich in strong female characters and it gets major points from me because of that. This probably isn't your typical Star Wars, and you might get more out of it if you enjoyed Clone Wars and Rebels, but I still found it to be fun.
See me live!
I am in a house improv team at Endgames Improv in San Francisco! If you want to see me perform, please come to Feed The God of Comedy this coming Friday, October 13th at 7 p.m. at 2965 Mission Street in San Francisco. Come on by for lots of laughs and a good time!
End Notes
Okay, that's it for now! Just want to note that this newsletter now has a vanity URL -- nicolelee.news -- so it's a little easier to share with folks. I also want to reiterate that while this newsletter is free, it would mean a lot to me if you paid for an optional monthly subscription to help offset hosting costs and to support my writing. Thank you so much!