I Ching reading: from newsletter to blog
Background
Before 'Answers' was a blog, it was an email newsletter - first monthly, then twice monthly. But the time came, back in 2005, when I started to think about changing this. Hence this reading, originally published in the newsletter:
Reader interest in the newsletter seems to be waning, with steadily fewer people actually opening their copy to read it. That might be because it's too long to read, or because it's too long to get past the filters and quotas and into people's inboxes in the first place. But anyway: it's a bind being tied down to a couple of days' work writing, proofreading, formatting as html, formatting again as text, creating links, checking links, checking deliverability... twice a month, when at the end of all that there are a lot of people it never reaches. And delivering email is not going to get any easier.
I thought of sending you a shorter email with links to articles online. And I thought of providing an RSS feed (an email-independent way for you to get the information) in addition to email. Putting these two thoughts together, I think what I need is a blog - an online journal. Less time wasted on technical and presentation issues, more chance to provide articles and recommendations in more digestible portions. (And a bunch of webmaster-ish advantages I won't bore you with here.)
But then again - will the readers (that would be you ;) ) like the change? And will it eat even more time and energy than the newsletter?
I Ching readings
Time for divination to make sense of the pros and cons. Yi, what would be the effects of converting the newsletter to a blog update notification email?
Hexagram 40, unchanging. Release - pure and simple!
This is especially about release from bonds, untying knots. I won't be 'tied down' to a schedule any more. Looking at this answer, I felt a huge sense of relief - which is another thing it's about, of course.
Release is the second half of a Pair with 39, Difficulties. It has to do with being released from 'heroic labours' when I realise that there are better, more co-operative ways of doing things. (With a blog, you can just comment on anything I write, then and there, on the page. No need to send an email or wait for the next issue.)
And just listen to this:
‘Release. Harvest in the southwest.
With no place to go,
Your coming return is good fortune.
Having a direction to go,
Daybreak, good fortune.’
The southwest is where people have alliances, like-minded people to work with. For the rest: when I don't have anything to say, don't write. When I have something good to explore and share, I can get on with it at once. (I don't have to wait until the next issue, by which time I'll have lost the freshness of it.)
With this answer, I get the feeling that Yi has simplified things for me, boiled it right down to the essential so that I can get past the techno-speak and see the point of it.
It also describes an effect for you as a subscriber, I think: being able to follow up on articles that interest you without trudging through a lot of stuff that doesn't.
My next question was, 'How best to make the changeover?'
(Thinking about how to present it to you, how not to annoy anyone, etc...)
And the answer was Hexagram 23, Stripping Away - again, unchanging.
'Stripping away.
No harvest in having a direction to go.'
If you know the oracle at all, you will know that this looks on the face of it like a pretty disturbing answer. I've included it here just as an example of a reading that is not all sweetness and light, and one where the interpretation wasn't immediately, intuitively obvious, either. In fact, it's taken me a few days to start to get to grips with it. Here are my ideas so far:
First, the issue is not how to present it to you. 23 has moved on from 22 - in fact the reason I need to strip things away at all is because my 22-ing, my presentation and communication, is taking up too much energy and becoming hollow.
Second, there is a lot of 'dead wood' in the newsletter, and what it needs is radical surgery to get rid of stuff most people aren't particularly interested in. That leaves time, energy and space free to grow something a lot more alive. The focus needs to be on clearing stuff out, not on making some grand plan of what I'm going to put in. 'No harvest in having a direction to go.' A blog is a way to become more flexible and responsive.
And third, a blog is a way to give you more.
'Mountain rests on the earth. Stripping Away.
With generosity from above, creating tranquil places below.'
Right now I have a truly mountainous archive of great lumbering back issues. As Jack Balkin puts it, 'Old ways of doing things are disintegrating and nothing has yet taken their place.' Quite. In a nutshell. And here I am (well, there I was before this reading) obsessing about technicalities, thinking far too much about the form and presentation of the thing and not nearly enough about what it can give you.
Outcomes
Yes, this newsletter will turn into a shorter email with links to online posts. Maybe not this month (like I said, I have a lot on!), but soon. There will be more and shorter articles, over a wider range of topics while I find out what you enjoy. Since Yi gave me that swift kick with Hexagram 23, don't expect a fully-formed, organised-to-death effort to start with: it will be more freeform initially, and take shape according to your comments and preferences.
As soon as I'd reached this decision I started to see the effects of Release. I had a surge of ideas for short articles, none of them fitting into the usual newsletter 'boxes', all great fun to write. Hope you'll enjoy this as much as I think I'm going to...