2022 Recap
A yearly recap and future plans.
This post will be a bit different from how I usually write. The year is just about over and I would like to sincerely thank every single person who’s subscribed to this newsletter of mine.
After being so exhausted by the past few years in so many respects, I wanted to finally start writing properly. And so, I embarked on this journey and published my first piece in March. But in actuality, the whole thing only really picked up in the past 2 months.
Now I have over 875 subscribers, and I know it doesn’t seem like much, but it means a lot to me!
Originally, this newsletter was named Thinking Historically. Because I’m so indecisive, this was just a placeholder since I studied history in college (BA and MA). In the past year, I spent so many hours trying to figure out a better overarching theme for this substack.
Lots of brainstorming and going back and forth on possible ideas, while also exploring other people’s substacks (along with some anxiety about why I was bothering with this at all!)
Deciding on a Name and Theme (and more)
After giving it some thought, I eventually settled on two key concepts that I feel in my own personal life so strongly.
Firstly, it’s evident to me that we’re living through a time of great flux, one that is prone to crises. Right now, we’re caught in something like an in-between, an interregnum. Things feel very unsettled and up in the air. And secondly, it is amid such times that new social phenomena are more likely to emerge. This is what novum means, originally taken from the book The Principle of Hope by Ersnt Bloch.
Novum can be thought of as the potential for ‘newness’ said to be present in each era. Some periods are more open to novum than others. It’s become a word often associated with science fiction, but Bloch originally intended it as a historical concept. He wrote:
Ages in which nothing happens have almost lost the feeling for the Novum; they live in habit and what is coming is no such thing, but rather as circumscribed as what happened yesterday. But ages like the modern one, in which history, perhaps for centuries, stands in the balance, have the feeling for the Novum in the extreme, they sense what future is…1
This is all explained more fully on my About Page, which I suggest reading. But simply put, this newsletter is an investigation into what’s new amid the historic, changing times.
Still, this seems a bit vague. “Changing times” … Everything’s always changing, anyway. So, I had to go deeper. Inspired by a 2020 essay Let’s Talk about the Interregnum, it’s not true that all transitional periods are made equal. They can be further broken up into levels: global affairs, state, and society. In moments of crisis and transition, one of these three often takes center stage.
But I think we’re in a strange moment where it’s 3-for-3: the fundamentals of all three are being affected so strongly. Therefore, I decided to organize my newsletter into these three sections and name it after the novelty that may come from them in these exciting times, hence Novum Newsletter.
On my home page, these sections—Global, State & Politics, and Social— are visible on the top bar, along with another section dedicated to History. As for the design, the style behind all the icons is suprematism.
10 Points about the Year (and what went wrong)
The best topics are those that cut the gordian knot across many different perspectives, those questions that everyone agrees deserve discussion. Sociality is one example, which I why I think The Social Recession became the most popular piece published this year, with some 50,000 views!
Something I’ve picked up on is that people tend to get bored of very niche substacks. It’s good to cover many different topics and keep things engaging. It’s also better for me as a writer anyway, much more fun that way.
But sometimes, a deep dive with much detail is really appreciated. I published A World of Civilization States in September, where I profiled four emerging powers who were repositioning themselves along civilizational lines. It’s still my longest article by far. I only had 122 readers then, but it was reopened and revisited via email 5-6x on average.
Readers are so important to me, but it’s crucial not to get caught up with appeasing people. Initially, when I published “What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?" I actually lost a handful of readers. But then it went viral, and I gained over 100 subscribers. The lesson being, it’s better to just write and not worry about how it’ll be taken.
Relating to (4), writing online is as much about refining my thoughts as it is about who’s reading them. I honestly write because it is the best way to make sense of my ideas and structure them. In this respect, the process behind writing has clarified my own life tremendously.
You really have no clue who’s going to pick up your article. When I published my second-ever article here in April titled Uncertain Futures, basically no one read it. But then it was stumbled upon by
totally randomly and included in their Saturday review.After sending out a piece, I sometimes fall into a terrible habit of editing it afterward. It’s getting better, but I really need to stop that. Sending out a post should pretty much be final.
Because it’s going directly into people’s inboxes, the newsletter email oddly feels a bit invasive. But this is silly, and I try not to let it get to me as much.
Writing on Substack has made me such an avid reader of others on here as well. This really is where the blogosphere is at now. Some great people have been recommending this newsletter as well, and I'm so grateful! These are publications you should definitely subscribe to, by the way, like:
Finally, I keep my Twitter use pretty limited, but I made one for this substack in October. It’s just for posting extras related to what I’ve been reading and writing, plus other things. If you want to follow, that’d be nice.
Plans for 2023
While I do enjoy standalone articles like the ones I’ve been doing, I think I am going to change things up for next year.
My main goal for 2023 is to start a weekly review series.
The process of synthesizing what’s being published nowadays, and tying together disparate stories, really fits nicely with the philosophy behind this substack. It also allows for more engaging dialogue with both readers and other writers, something I hope to cultivate in 2023. Overall, it’s just a very fun idea to keep things interesting for readers. It’d also be clarifying for me personally. I am going to give it a shot.
So, the plan for 2023 is a weekly review of newly-published stories related to the themes of this newsletter from around the web (mostly other substacks). And every month or so, a standalone piece like I have been doing so far. Let’s see how it goes!
I have some other possible ideas but haven’t given them enough thought yet to share. We’ll leave those to how the year develops.
Thanks for reading and sticking around, and Happy New Year!
P.S. I’m currently away for the holiday but will be back in mid-January.
- Anton
Bloch, Ernst. The Principle of Hope, pg. 288