An interlude, a story, and a thank you.
i owe y'all for real
Hello! Before anything else — thanks! Thanks for opening this email or clicking the link that led you here or skimming via the Substack app or for picking up a printed copy from a stack of papers at the NSA/MI6/whoever is violating people’s privacy in other countries. I owe you, for real.
I’ve been a negligent newsletter writer in recent weeks (especially to my paid subscriber friends, I missed a monthly horoscope. As always, if you’d like a refund for that reason or no reason, just let me know!).
I can’t really blame this negligence on anything aside from the combination of world events getting me down and the feeling that my writing here was drifting a bit from what I meant for it to be. Is that neurotic/wishy washy enough? Judging by the amount of grammatical caveating with parentheses and forward slashes and conjunctions so far, yes, it is wishy washy enough.
The name of this newsletter is Ask Good Questions and I can’t remember if I’ve explained why that is before.
Here’s the story: my dad is a very smart person and a very curious person. As much as I have respect for his parents for a lot of what they gave to him and how they raised him, that curiosity and that intellectual thirst is decidedly not something that was given to him. But as long as I’ve known him, he’s been a reader and a question asker.
Coach Foos has never been afraid to look up the phone number of an expert in a field he cares about, cold call them, and ask if they have some time to talk. Basketball coaches, history teachers, professors at graduate schools he kind of knows about but mostly just likes their basketball team.1 No one is off limits. That’s already enough to inspire me to be the way I am, but this newsletter’s origins are really even more literal than that.
Growing up, my siblings and I knew to expect that when we saw our dad at the end of a school day, after he set down his briefcase and gym bag. Perhaps over a bowl of mint chocolate chip BlueBell ice cream, sitting on a warm patio, feet kicked up onto cast iron furniture while our mom worked valiantly in the background to turn rocky Texas soil into a garden, he’d inquire, Did you ask any good questions today?
That’s how my dad taught us to measure a day, by whether or not we’d asked any good questions. Not by how well we’d answered questions, but by how well we’d asked questions. At the risk of being saccharine, this is very cool to me. This is why I write a newsletter and what I think I’ve been drifting away from.
Here’s what I’ll say with some certainty about the next week and about the near future of this newsletter:
I won’t be doing monthly horoscopes by Rising sign any more. There are already so many of those, for all levels of astrological interest. If you want me to connect you with one that matches your level of astrological interest, I’m truly happy to. Comment or email and I’ll hook you up.
I will be writing astrologically interesting monthly essays for paid subscribers, following the Sam Kriss model a bit2. What I mean is that I’ll write more experimental and potentially weird work for the paid readers. Ideas that I’m still playing with and that I think will be of use to you in their half-formed stage. Angling for these to be rooted in “good questions” which was the point of this whole thing in the first place.
There will still be essays for all subscribers, still weekly. Weirder sometimes and maybe more sappy sometimes, because I like that stuff too.
Interviews. Interviews. Interviews. (Thank you to those of you who I interviewed a while ago and who haven’t seen yours released yet. This Gemini Moon, ADHD boy appreciates your patience.)
That’s all for now. I hope you have a really good rest of your week and the Full Moon in Aries makes you feel capable and effective and like you don’t need to wait for anyone to start moving toward the life you want.
My dad famously went to Indiana University for grad school after not taking the GRE or having a complete application. He’d been in contact with some teachers in the program and they had a spot to fill. Not a “who you know” situation, but a “who you ask” situation.
But also not Sam Kriss, I don’t think anyone can really model themselves after that. Nor should they, probably.