I'm not sure how I would mark exactly one year of doing this. Of writing and sending out newsletters. It's kind of a big sludgy grey area because of various iterations and stop-starts and so I'm planting a flag in the sludge and saying it's been a year.
If I cast my mind back though, the signs were there from an early age.
When I was two years old I ate baked beans for the first time and then promptly threw them up all over the floor. This was, I believe, my first foray into the world of publishing and content creation. In the spirit of social media in recent times, it was explosive and edgy and just how the platforms like it: prioritising quantity over quality. I’m told a lot came out.
Due to it being several decades before the invention of smartphones, influencers and social media platforms, opportunities to build an audience and monetize were limited and this phase of my life as an experimental content creator and indie publisher ended abruptly.
I'm pleased to say a lot's changed since those crude first efforts. I sit in a big boy's chair now. I'm more thoughtful and considered. Less self-defecating and more self-deprecating.
Looking back though - aside from perhaps the whole thing being a ruthless piece of performance art commenting on the fact that apparently everything is content these days, including art, and that we're all content creators - as those baked beans swirled dangerously in my belly, it was a moment that perhaps set something off inside of me. And not just my gag reflex.
A desire to get something out of me and into the world.
Back to that flag in the sludge though - it was roughly over one year ago that I started playing around with writing.
I had written a couple of ridiculous stories and uploaded them to Instagram. Then sent out a couple of newsletters in early 2023 along with a little fable. In the middle of the year I properly got going, posting more regularly. In April, my wife and I moved overseas and while in Italy, I started writing about big seagulls and flying babies and how we saw a deer and tried to figure out what celebrity it looked like and it turns out the answer was Anya Taylor-Joy. I kept going as I second-hand smoked my way around the Balkans and then when things wound down as we prepared to come back to Western Australia.
I didn't come up with a big plan or strategy and find a niche or anything like that. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't define it. I just noticed I had ideas coming out of me thick and fast and it felt really fun and satisfying to write and illustrate those ideas and start sending them out.
Some amazing things have happened along the way. I got featured by Substack. I had some people I admire very much say some nice things about my posts, and I had other generous supporters go above and beyond in showing that support.
In June this year, I had roughly 34 subscribers. And now, as of writing this, there are 482 of you. Although I imagine that number is probably less now because of the whole baked beans thing.
Writing and illustrating this newsletter has been pure joy and so I'm incredibly grateful to all of you that have opened up and read my posts each week, left comments or sent me emails.
Seriously, thank you.
I find it difficult writing these kinds of posts. It feels weird to reflect openly, perhaps a bit self-indulgent. But it also feels necessary to acknowledge where things are at. And that I'm aware and appreciative that people read this, and that it's very much a one-way conversation, which is also a weird thing. With that said, always feel free to email me and say hello if that's your thing. But also totally fine if it's not.
As far as what's coming up, I have lots of ideas I'm really excited to share with you all next year, and plenty of others that haven't happened yet, which I'm sure will be driven by the fact that I ate another terrible dessert or saw a funny looking tree.
Mostly though, I'll be doing much the same as what I was doing this year. Wandering around, looking at things, thinking about them a lot, and then trying to find something thoughtful or funny to say about it. Then perhaps trying to weave all of that into a story and hope that people read it, feel uplifted, have a laugh or even think about things in a new light.
I'm not so great at categories so whatever all of that fits under, if that sounds good to you, I hope you'll stick around.
Happy holidays to you and I'll see you in the new year.
One last thing: I wanted to drop a special shout out here to the Chief Editor and Sounding Board Officer for Life Crumbs, my amazing wife, KB. I couldn’t send this out without her expert editing, sounding board support, co-adventuring and general English language wizardry. She makes all my posts look way more polished that I could ever hope to pull off on my own, and any mistakes that go out are only there because I decided I liked the way it sounded and left something in, despite it being grammatically wrong. Like this paragaph for instance, which is probably wrong because I didn’t run it by KB.
Yup! Vomited beans. That's pretty much it! LOL
It wasn't the beans, to be honest. It was the lack of polish in that final paragraph... 😜