I just read Craig Mod’s Ridgeline newsletter, Walking the Length of Manhattan. It came in my inbox. I read it over coffee, at the Grad House, on paper. (An experiment in undigital reading. Thanks, Noah Pleshet.) I also read two cover letters, a grant application, and a peer-reviewed journal article. Why I ever try to read digitally, I’m not sure.
Anyway, Mod’s is a fun, short little account of walking the length of New York. I enjoyed it, and thought of walking a similar route with my son in May. I never wrote it up though. In the opening paragraph, I circled how Mod talked about projects.
My original NYC plan was to do five or six days of huge walks while running a pop-up newsletter—basically go walk bananas in the city. But then I stopped for a second and thought: What if I just … enjoyed NYC? And so I did. I did the thing I have a hard time doing — simply enjoying a place or trip instead of turning it into a project. Of course I did micro walks, micro projects. I walked the Brooklyn Bridge, I sped-walked the Met, and I walked around some POPS (privately owned public spaces).
Micro walks, micro projects. Mod has special projects too. Ridgeline is a special project of Mod’s.
As an academic, I think in publications, of course. But, I wonder. Maybe this is not a good idea. A publication takes months, or years. If it’s a book, years or more. I’m working on a Mac application, Fichero. It’s not a micro project. But, it’s also taken three years.
But, along the way, I’ve done so many little micro-projects that never go anywhere. Mini essays. Shorts on Colombia. A collection of colonial maps. Ideas for using AI to read old documents. I think there’s a place for me to re-imagine this blog as a place to post micro, mini, and special projects. A small thing that is good enough to deserve a home, before it becomes a journal article. Indeed, most never will become an article.
Anyway, if I add a projects tab to this site, Craig is the inspiration.