The Token Word Inaugural Issue
Happy Halloween everyone! This is the first issue of The Token Word newsletter. You can read archives here (once I have some). Being this is Issue #1, I decided to talk about the why behind this newsletter, how it will hopefully spark some inspiration or creativity for your day. Then the what. What I’m offering for your reading time.
Ever since I made my first website back in circa 1992 I have wanted to start writing a newsletter. Back then it was a post-aol self-hosted Internet world. That was before commerce and advertising took over the majority of the Internet. I was using a company called Concentric Network (now owned by Verizon).
According to the first time the Wayback Machine crawled my site www.concentric.net/~sfillmer was in 1999. I had not looked at that page in maybe 20 years until just now. Apparently the Wayback Machine exists just to exploit my complete lack of creativity in building my own website as it looks almost the same in 1999 as it does today. How is that even possible? But here we are a mere 23-ish years later and I finally got a newsletter setup and running.
The Why Behind this Newsletter
Trying to figure out the “why” was much harder than I thought. Everyone has those standard excuses “I don’t know what to write,” or “I don’t have anything to say,” or “who is going to read this anyway,” and so on. There are countless excuses, but in the end my thinking came down to (1) I like to write and take photos, and (2) I like to connect with others online. I came up with plenty of other reasons below if you want to take a deep dive into that thought.
In my experience, doing anything for the wrong reasons almost always kills any creativity and freedom that can happen in that space. Most “good” reasons today almost always revolve around how much money it can made, or how many “members/followers” of whatever you can gain (because more followers equals more money). I’m trying to ignore those reasons.
No Sales. No Ads.
Just so you know. I’m not selling anything (except perhaps myself, and maybe someday this newsletter… but I’m not selling an actual product here), I’m not asking you to DO anything (other than maybe read), and I HATE ads with a passion. So I put in the description “No sales. No ads.” because that’s important to me, I hope it’s appealing to you.
How many spaces do we have left in our daily lives where the agenda is to enjoy the space without being sold something? If I ever find space like that, I stay longer, engage more, and feel lifted up. Ads wear me out. They are so engrained in everything we do it’s impossible to get away from them.
More Reasons Why
This was mostly for me to try to understand myself, but in case someone else is also struggling with this question, here are a few other reasons I came up with…
to make space for creativity to happen
create original content just for this space
be a launching point for interesting topics
engage with readers in a fun and positive way
provide some kind of value to readers
have content that doesn’t depend on social media
to create new content OFF social media
because my son created one for his company that looks so cool I want to be as cool as his is (FIG Insights), and he didn’t wait 23 years to do it
to force myself to be creative again
to create content without having to conform to the expectations of someone else but to just to do something I enjoy doing for the sake of doing it
to create a more personal community through email
to take and post more photos
to read other people’s newsletters more often
to be more open source with media and content
to discuss topics I personally enjoy
to continue to refine my writing skills
I also love to read other people’s newsletters. If you have one, send it over, I would love to subscribe and learn about what goes on in your world. If you have ever thought about starting up a blog or a newsletter I would encourage you to just do it and don’t worry about what people think or whether it’s “good enough” or not.
All it has to be is unique to you. Nobody else can be you. You are what’s interesting to me.
The What Behind this Newsletter
I’ve loosely broken up the organization of this newsletter into a prose/words and a token. This section is the “word” part of the newsletter (it won’t always be this long). The token section is bite sized, curated content. This is intended to be easy to read, skim, or click through on interesting things from around my Internet world.
To steal a term from the crypto world, I’m going to offer a few tokens, or findings if you prefer, that interest me, hopefully one will interest you as well. The topics are loosely focused around the categories on my website.
Photography (lots of photos)
Technology (about the tech we use)
Thinking Offgrid (outside the box)
Living Life (just everyday life stuff)
Matters of Faith (hopefully small inspirational things)
The Uncategorized (an open creative space)
I may or may not hit each topic (token) each issue, but that is what makes up the sandbox I intend to hold myself to as time goes on.
What is NOT Behind this Newsletter
Sometimes it’s easier understand what something is not. So if that interests you, this newsletter is NOT…
A place to sell things
A soapbox
Old content. This is new original content created specifically just for this newsletter. I do have a blog and I would love for you to read it if you are interested.
A place to be intentionally controversial or divisive
A place for politics
A place with a hidden agenda of any kind
A place for negativity or trolling
A place to criticize or judge others
I didn’t say anything about frequency. I have in my mind to do a weekly (out on Friday) newsletter, but who knows. It may be bi-weekly, monthly, I’m still trying to figure that out.
Thoughts on Photography
This question came across my screen the past week asking, “Are we allowed to be creative for the sake of being creative?” I loved the answer.
In America, no. Somehow, our artwork and creative pursuits is only seen as virtuous if we are able to earn money from it, “make a living from it”, or preferably make a killing from it.
For example, if you tell other people that you’re a photographer, probably the first question they will ask you is if you earn money from it, or if you make a living from it. Why do people ask you this? Because once again, to earn money from some thing is a legitimizing force. To do something, without concern of money is seen as pointless.
~ERIC KIM Photography
I have fought this notion for as long as I can remember. Especially as it pertains to photography. His newsletter below has a lot of really good thoughts about just shooting and ignoring the noise that constantly surrounds us.
I’m trying to get out and shoot more and worry less about how perfect it looks. Instagram has made photography “too perfect” among other things. The only person that has to like the image you’ve created is yourself. And if you don’t, you have a way to improve.
From My Lightroom Archives
I remember walking through the woods on this trail thinking this is the greenest-green I’ve ever seen. Looking at it years later I still think the same thing. Here is the full high res version with explanation if you are interested.
Thoughts on Technology
Technology moves so quickly these days that it’s fascinating to see who knows what and uses what apps or devices. I have friends that know nothing about the software I used and vice-versa. I found it fascinating to see the technology I used just to publish this newsletter. Sure some can use nothing but a keyboard, but these are the things I used to get this article published.
iA Writer (which I wrote a review about below)
Revue
Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter Write
Refind
Typefully
Readwise
Instapaper
Procreate
RSS Readers (Feedly Most)
Safari, Chrome, and Firefox
Tailwinds
WordPress
Apple Mail
iMessage
Lightroom
Photoshop
an iPhone Camera
Sony a7iii Camera
an iPad, a MaBook, and a Mac Studio
and Apple Music for sanity purposes
I’m sure I’m leaving something out, but you get the idea. We use a lot of stuff to create. Our brains have a fantastic capacity to learn and retain information.
Thinking Offgrid
This is about thinking outside the box, not living like Davey Crocket or something like that. There are so many different ways to “thinking offgrid,” but for us, it’s about how do we live with less, to be content with less.
Doing things that aren’t necessarily attached to the “main grid” of life is what I consider “off grid.” Cable vs streaming is a good example. We canceled DirectTV 10-12 years ago, and that was a move off the grid of cable tv. It was a fantastic move for us back then. There are almost countless things in normal life that can be seen through this lens (more on this in later issues).
Most recently, we bought a 20 year old van to convert into a camper, RV, #vanlife, whatever you want to call it. This is offgrid for us. We are just getting started on this project, but we have done this before when we converted a Greyhound Bus into an RV.
Matters of Faith
I read a lot more now than I did years ago. Still not as much as I would like. One of the best apps I’ve come across with regards to reading is the Readwise app which pulls in all your kindle highlights, articles, books, all kinds of things, and then puts it in a short daily email called Your Daily Readwise.
This was a great snippet in my email the other day.
We live forward. Ecclesiastes teaches us to live life backward. It encourages us to take the one thing in the future that is certain—our death—and work backward from that point into all the details and decisions and heartaches of our lives, and to think about them from the perspective of the end. It is the destination that makes sense of the journey. If we know for sure where we are heading, then we can know for sure what we need to do before we get there. Ecclesiastes invites us to let the end sculpt our priorities and goals, our greatest ambitions and our strongest desires. (View Book on Amazon)
Living Life Backward by David Gibson
I love that. Let the end sculpt our priorities and goals. It’s so easy to let distractions rule the day.
The Uncategorized
I will leave you with a drawing I did for Halloween a while back. Don’t judge. I’m trying to learn how to draw like a 5 year old again. Procreate App is awesome for that. I’m happy with that.
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