Two Milestones Reached: A Note to Readers

Thought for the Fortnight

Yes, this is a note – not my usual something to ponder. But bear with me, this week’s post will come shortly.

I am taking this moment to express my delight about two milestones reached by this newsletter.

First, it has just passed its first anniversary. I started this venture in early November 2022 with roughly 25 family and friends as subscribers. I believe they kindly wanted to support me with my new enterprise and were probably curious about what was to follow.

So was I.

I had no idea what I would be writing about, but I wanted each post to be stimulating but also different and therefore unpredictable. And so it has proved to be. I say to the occasional casual inquirer that it has covered everything from Annunciations (paintings) to research on orgasms, which is certainly the case. And much else besides. You may be amused to learn that the former post had more than three times the readership of the latter one.

I also wondered, one year ago, whether anyone else would ever be interested in joining up – and would have been thrilled to reach 100 subscribers.

So I am delighted to say that the second milestone reached in the past month – to my huge surprise – is that there are now well over 500 subscribers (528 for those who seek exactitude). A big thank you to my F&F for your early support and to all others who have joined in along the way. I hope you have found it enjoyable, sometimes amusing and generally thought-provoking, which were – and remain – my aims.

Many of you will not know this, but Substack loves to collect statistics. It tells me how many subscribers I have, of course, but also how many times a post has been viewed and much else besides.

I decided that in the last two months of 2023, I would re-post some early pieces which I particularly liked but were little read, as there were few subscribers at the time. The first will be arriving in your in-box within minutes.

I have not yet decided whether to leaven these with new posts, to keep my early subscribers awake, but will definitely send out only new posts in the New Year.

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