I thought it would be a good idea to get myself a bit better organized for 2024 and also to articulate to readers what I'm planning, so they can decide whether to continue subscribing, which (or both) of the two Substacks to follow, and which they may want to support. Substack is a bit idiosyncratic and opaque, and some readers have asked me why I'm doing what I'm doing, with the two accounts. The main reason was that I thought there was a difference between the people who are interested in note-making, self-directed learning, and the Great Books, and those who were primarily interested in historiography, primary sources, and the results of my own research. Not entirely, I suppose. But I've seen a lot of people turning off their email notifications, which based on my own experiences I interpret as feeling a bit overwhelmed by a constant barrage of announcements of posts they have no interest in reading. So I'm trying to create two places from which people will get announcements for posts of content they'd actually like to engage with. I imagine a positive feedback datapoint would be an increase in the percentage of people opening the posts, which I can see in my Substack stats.
So the plan for beginning 2024 on Substack is that I'm going to concentrate on two themes, broadly. One is History, represented by MakingHistory. The other is Reading, Making Notes, and Writing, represented by Lifelong Learners. In the long run, I imagine that a lot of the stuff I do on MH will find its way into history books or textbooks. The LL content will probably lead to updates to the Handbook, How to Make Notes and Write. There may be some overlap between these two categories. Research techniques will probably find their way into the revised Handbook at some point (4th edition?), but in the meantime a lot of that will probably be more evident in the research I'm actually posting under the "My Research" in MH .
In the spirit of New Year's resolutions, I also wanted to make some plans about what and how frequently I would be posting, to set some expectations for readers. Tentatively (let me know if you have feedback!), the plan for MakingHistory is to post a Historiography piece on Tuesdays and Thursdays and a Primary Source on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And then, on the weekend, to post something a bit longer, related to my ongoing research into Freethinkers, the Plutocracy, or the White Pine Lumber industry. There's some overlap between these topics, but I'm excited to build up some momentum in each area and a great way to insure that is to post content.
In Lifelong Learners, the focus will be on Reading and Note-making Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (including my reports on chapters of Adler's How to Read a Book and other important sources), the Great Books on Tuesday and Thursday, and on the weekends my Book Club videos and the "Week in Review" I started a couple of weeks ago on MH. I've decided to shift this over to LL because it seems to be more a part of my ongoing self-education than strictly History research.
I hope this all makes sense and sounds interesting! Please feel free to let me know if you have any comments or suggestions. All the signs suggest that 2024 is going to be an eventful year. I'm changing jobs (maybe careers), and then there's the whole global and national craziness and the election. I'm hoping to be able to keep my head down as much as possible, and work on my own work. Happy New Year!
2024 Plan