Hello again, dear reader.
In case you're new here, I'm Alastair Johnston and you're receiving this newsletter because you subscribed over at my blog or via a link from Substack. I'm grateful for you giving me some of your time and attention and hope I always inform or entertain you here. If not, please feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended.
Here are the latest interesting things I’d love to share with you.
Daffodils
It felt timely to re-share this post I wrote on the blog a while back. Even as I type these words some of the Daffodil patches in my local area are just beginning to brown and fade. As Ferris Bueller once said,
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it!”
I noticed how my original post ties nicely in with the theme of my Unmachined Substack, so maybe, look away from your screen, go outside, find some daffs and just notice them before it’s too late for another year.
Being braver
This shouldn’t need saying, but it does. You have the basic right to speak about your work. It is absolutely legitimate to want others to know about your work. You are allowed to want to make money from your work.
I found this on Katherine May’s “The Clearing”. It came at just the right time. It might not seem like it as a reader of my newsletter, but I find it really hard to share my work publicly. Major “imposter syndrome”. I worry that people will make fun of what I write or create, judge me about it, or ridicule it. I worry that offering people an opportunity to pay me for my writing is wrong. Sometimes my internal dialogue is that it’s not valuable, that I’m not a proper writer, that I’m a fraud. But this article really made me think and be brave and show my work. And I need to be braver in sharing it. And that is why I decided to open up paid subscriptions on my Substack to allow people to show their support or patronage, in addition to my Ko-Fi page.
And while you’re at it Wintering and Enchantment by Katherine are well worth reading.
Dark Patterns
Dark patterns, the tricks websites use to make you say yes, opens your eyes to noticing some of the shadier mind tricks that some websites play on you to influence choice. When you notice things you are halfway there to being able to push back against them.
Stevie Nicks
I was a huge Stevie Nicks fan from the mid 1980’s after having walked into HMV in London, heard a track playing over the loudspeakers in the shop and telling myself that if I liked the next song, I’d buy the album. I walked out of the shop with my cassette version of Rock a Little in my hand and was a fan ever since.
Years later I managed to buy tickets to see Fleetwood Mac in the UK, when Christine McVie was still alive, the first time the whole band had come back together for years. Illness caused my gig to be cancelled. Forward a few more years and Stevie and Tom Petty were on tour in the UK. I bought tickets and then for personal reasons couldn’t make it. So finally when I heard that she was touring the UK this summer, I just dived in, spent some serious cash on the best view and hopefully will be rocking on with her in the sunshine. I absolutely cannot wait. But until then, I’d like to share this 1981 recording of Stevie Nicks joyfully singing along to ‘Wild Heart’ which just makes me smile. And reading the comments, I’m not alone.
That’s it for now. I hope you enjoy my little newsletter notes.
Be kind!
Thoughts? Insights? Feel free to comment via Substack to join the discussion or email me.