Can you believe it’s been a full five years since I started this Substack? I took a bit of a flyer when I launched in the summer of 2020. At the time, we were all mired in the uncertain days of the COVID-19 pandemic, homebound and isolated. For those of us fortunate enough to have more independent, work-from-home jobs, there wasn’t much change in terms of work style or, obviously, environment. But simply how people interacted and what we all valued became distilled. There was a palpable change in the air. It was a time of experimentation for many of us. Maybe the fears of this global health crisis caused more soul searching, and people to take some chances—“if not now, when?” Some turned to sourdough, others wrote books, learned an instrument, or started a podcast. I can’t say it was the pandemic itself that inspired me to start Swimpruf, but I also can’t rule out that a shift in outlook played into it.
In my very first post here, I explained the appeal of writing a subscription newsletter:
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