[Sent July 30, 2012, as the final letter.ly/drafts newsletter)
"When Levin thought about what he was and what he lived for, he found no answer and fell into despair; but when he stopped asking himself about it, he seemed to know what he was and what he lived for, because he acted and lived firmly and definitely; recently he had even lived much more firmly and definitely than before." (Anna Karenina, Book 8, Chapter X)
I finished Anna Karenina, finally. All it took was setting up a week-long block on the eight websites where I spend the majority of my Internet time (tumblr, google reader, metafilter, twitter, reddit, the awl, the billfold, the hairpin), having a mixture of sunscreen and sweat melt into my eyes on a steamy beach, staying up almost an entire night with dreadful insomnia, and being stuck in the airport for twelve hours. In other words, a vacation. It was great. I had originally intended for it to be a working vacation and I did do some work at first but then I found that doing the work meant that I didn't feel like I was on vacation and so I quit and felt bad about it for a day or so, that I was cheating you of something, and then I just gave myself over to this project being done and concentrated on simply enjoying myself, which it turns out I am good at if I really do try.
I came home yesterday to a stack of magazines crammed into my mailbox and in one of the New Yorkers I had missed, which I started to read this morning as I had cereal with sliced peaches for breakfast, there was a light, short piece by Jane Kramer about trying to take a vacation in Southeast Asia as a tourist instead of as a reporter, with "no notebooks, no Bic twelve-packs." Ultimately, she fails to do so, partially because, as she claims, "reporters can never have the adventure of being real tourists: a little lost, knowing nobody, entirely on their own" and partially, you know, because she wrote a piece about it for The New Yorker.
The piece, while not really amazing (there is a similarly slight summer poem inlaid above two of its columns), is a nice example of the piece in which you write about not writing something as a way of writing that thing. I have used that gambit any number of times in my "career" but I really don't have any interest about writing about my little vacation, just as I didn't want to write during it. I just don't feel the need. I saw The Dark Night Rises and feel no need to write about the implications of that; I got new glasses and had kind of learn to refocus my eyes and don't care to write about that experience; a manta ray the size of a truck tire swam past my leg and I see no great symbolic significance in that; I ate a pile of boiled blue crabs, which is maybe my most Proustian meal, and I just ate them and have nothing to say besides they were tasty.
Maybe this is a result of some transcendent, epiphanic moment I had reading about Levin's revelations at the end of Anna Karenina (enh, probably not) and maybe it's because after a few months of sending out work without the constant heartbeat of Tumblr style love-fest feedback I've matured and no longer need the constant adoration of strangers to help me feel justified in how I am trying to live my life (hopefully, but I kind of doubt it). Maybe blocking all my favorite Internet sites for a week has made me realize how I don't care nearly as much about the Internet as I have convinced myself I do (probably just a vacation fantasy, but I really do recommend you try this, at least once, if you haven't), maybe I have grown tired of the sound of my own voice and the various ways I've found so far to make it manifest (enh meh blah idk), or maybe I am just feeling that this project has run its course for me and the summer is almost over that there are better ways for me to spend what is left of it than living inside the white and blue confines of Gmail (ding ding ding).
I don't know what the end of this means for my future as a writer or whatever but I am assuming that will work itself out, as it has in the past, and you will hear from me again, and if it doesn't, whatever, I guess I'll figure that out. I think I have learned something here, besides the things I've already told you in the past that I learned, but I haven't quite figured out how to express it yet, here or to myself, even in half-assed draft form. Maybe in time I will have something more articulate or analytical to say about it and maybe I will share that with you when it happens. I have really enjoyed being able to share things with you these past few months and have enjoyed what you have shared with me, too.
A part of me would have liked, instead of sending you this email, to just silently break our connection and let it fade away, as many of us do every day with the various significant and insignificant email chains in which we find ourselves entwined. But this is different than a normal email chain and I wouldn't feel right without sending you one more thing, even if I don't really have anything important to say in it.
So this is the end, or almost. Among other things, I am continuing to work on an interactive project that, without me intending it to, seems, in its form and style and themes, to be forming a coda to this whole email thing. I had hoped to have it done by now but it keeps growing in complexity and size and is going to probably take me another week or two at least to finish and while the idea of charging you for silence as I complete it is appealing to me in a conceptual kind of way, I also think it's kind of ridiculous and rude in a practical, common sense kind of way (I already feel kind of bad about the general lameness of this last month). Anyway, I will be letting you know about that when it's done (or at least beta test done), so keep your eyes open.
Two other final things. One is that I'm going to keep the list of your email addresses and maybe use them to send you emails like these in the future; not on a regular schedule and not for money, but if I have or made or saw or read something that I think you might like, it might be nice to still have the ability to send you something about it. If you'd like me to take you off this list now or at any time in the future, just let me know. Also, I would like to send you a postcard (or something similar; I haven't quite figured it out) as a little commemoration of your participation in this project (this project was about trying to make e-mail nice, but we all know real mail is forever better); if you'd like to receive one, please respond to this email with your mailing address (international addresses are fine).
I'll unsubscribe everybody from the list tomorrow morning before anyone's credit card can be charged again and I'll send out one more email sometime this week with a link to the full archives of the project (including months 2 and 3). Thanks again for doing this with me.
xoxo 4ev, -j