Annual report 2023

Letter No. 66: Includes mostly self-aggrandizement, but the pictures are nice.

Dear readers, thank you for your attention throughout this year. Subscriptions to The Joggled Mind more than doubled in 2023, and paid subscribers have helped cover the platform costs, which Dr Essai most appreciates. Bless you.

The doctor wrote 54 letters this year. These feel like the best:

• “We Have All Been There Before”: The passing of David Crosby prompts some reflection.
• “Okay, So Maybe I Won’t Win the Booker”: What began with the recurring interior question, I wonder if I’ll live to see that?
• “Boundary Conditions, Liminal States, and Working One’s Way to Grace”: When a friend writes something so good.
• “When You’re Done Here, Read Some E.B. White, But Not The Elements of Style”: A difference of opinion regarding a revered guide to prose.
• “Elegy for a Friend”: She is still gone and it still hurts.
• “Chance Encounters with the Celebrated”: Time to lighten up, eh?

The doctor dabbles in the photographic arts, working mostly in landscape, wildlife, and street imagery. He has more confidence in his prose, but now and then manages to make a good picture. This year’s good ones:

• The best landscape image, from Alaska:

• The best wildlife picture, from Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, Virginia:

• The best street image, from Athens, Ohio:

Proximo anno, Dr Essai hopes to produce 70 or so letters for you, his discerning readers. He would like to explore some new, creative possibilities for the format, and expand its audience, which is a major challenge. The letter’s website could be regarded as a blog, and Dr Essai plans to do more scribbling there, as well. Finally, there will be more, and the doctor hopes ever better, photography, including images from a photo excursion to East Greenland. (Well, if it happens; this is the third attempt after two trips aborted due to the covid-19 pandemic.)

In 2024, please be safe, be well, be kind, buy books, look after the dog, look after the cat, go see some art, go buy some art, love your friends, hug your friends, be patient, think for yourself, be creatively disobedient, and above all, pay attention. You have one wild and precious life and the dumbest thing you could do would be to miss any of it.