Six months of You Are Here
A roundup of highlights from a half-year of meanderings
This week is spring break for Boise State, so I’m going to take the phrase literally and, for the first time since I started this Substack, take a week off to regroup. I think it’s a good time to do so; not just because I desperately need to unplug, but also because yesterday was the six-month anniversary of my first post for You Are Here.
To answer your question: No, I can’t believe it’s been six months already. In looking back today on my 26 entries into this weird space, I was surprised to rediscover a few, having honestly forgotten I’d written them. I’m sure many of them have already aged very poorly. Some of them, however, I’m actually quite fond of.
So I thought that today, in lieu of a new post, I’d celebrate six months by giving you a literary charcuterie board of what I’ve managed to scrape together here so far. I hope this will be useful in particular to the few dozen of you who have graciously hopped on board since I launched last year.
First and foremost, I’m a political scientist, researcher, and teacher in my day job, so there’s been plenty of politics here already. There’s bound to be more on the horizon since we’re in an election year. You might be interested, for example, in my early-on debunking of the myth that the Electoral College is a good thing for place representation. I’ve also explored redistricting, place bias in presidential primaries, and political nationalization. Just last week I talked through political segregation and the inseparability of partisanship and race in America. I’ve even dipped into history to see what happened to all those Democrats that used to dominate the South.
A second type of post has typically featured what I call “Place Poems,” which (as the name implies) include some of my favorite poets’ work and my amateur commentary on it, alongside other “Place Picks” of mine (music, podcasts, writing, and artwork) that fit the theme of the poem. For a few examples, you might check out this Thanksgiving meditation featuring recent U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo; a slow-cooking appreciation of houses and homes with Jane Kenyon; or this celebration of the mutual birthday (and love of books) that I share with my favorite poet of all, Emily Dickinson. A final favorite of mine from last year found me learning in real time about the Lake Poets of England while reconsidering a Wordsworth poem I managed to recall from high school:
A final thicket I’ve tried exploring combines elements of politics, poetry, and place culture. They’re a little more experimental than the others, and have felt much riskier as I’ve put them together. They’ve also been, a little surprisingly, some of my favorites to write. These usually-longer musings have considered the strange and erratic passage of time; the enriching depth of the Legend of Zelda’s limitless world; and the surprising intersection of voter fraud and Mary Oliver’s verses. An early piece went wonderfully careening off the rails to celebrate the complicated joy of a good Applebee’s run.
If you know me well, you probably know that I am both verbose and a perfectionist, both likely to a fault. This isn’t always the best combo; specifically, this makes it difficult for me to send out weekly posts that are substantial, but also up to my probably-too-high standards, without staying up far too late on Monday nights to find just the right word to describe a stanza of poetry or a political trend. Yes, it’s been doable, and I’ve loved it—but I’ve decided that in the long term, it’s in the best interest of everybody (mainly me) that going forward I step back to a commitment of a post every two weeks instead of every week.
Taking more time with these posts will make them more precise, a little longer, and (I’m confident asserting this) a whole lot better. One thing I think I’ve learned in the first six months is that I write better and more interesting things when there’s more space to play with ideas, turn them around, and work them out without feeling like I need to rush it out. This slightly slower schedule will let me do that.
I also think this schedule will make it much more likely that You Are Here is sustainable in the long term. I have a couple of really time-consuming projects coming up in the next six months that deserve proper attention. One is a podcast I’m co-producing with my local NPR affiliate, the details of which I’ll be excited to share before too long; the other is applying for tenure, the details for which I promise to spare you from completely. But both projects, if completed successfully and mindfully, will help fuel new and exciting directions for this writing space.
I reserve the right to post in the intervals between weeks, even if it’s just a roundup of things I’ve been reading or a quick analysis-free poem for your perusal (This, of course, was the original plan for “Place Poems”, but I got carried away immediately). I also may move to a paid subscription model in the future where these “bonus” posts are reserved for supporting subscribers. But I’m not so concerned about that right now. Right now, just writing this thing has been a self-fulfilling reward that seems to give back more to be every week. I hope you’ll stay on the journey with me.
Also I’m hoping to post a similar anniversary post today! A year for me, but 6 months since I started engaging with the Substack network.
Congrats! I think every two weeks is a very reasonable posting interval for more substantial posts, it’s been working well for me—sometimes even pushing the limit on the energy and time I have available, but still, the momentum is compelling without being TOO exhausting. I have too many ideas to slow down at the moment!