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I’m constantly going back and forth about what I want to share in this newsletter.

Is it essay-poems about specific topics that help me say something I’m not really sure how to say?

Is it cultural commentary articles that could help me get hired for publications I follow, such as The Ringer or Defector?

Am I trying to go more into big “J” journalism instead of writing my subjective opinion?

How many original short stories can I really pump out on a weekly basis?

Is what I’m talking about, or many times complaining about, worth putting out into the world?

Is this the energy I want my creative work to be associated with?

What do I want people to feel when they read my writing?

I go through all of those questions in my head, and then I remember: 2UESDAY can be anything I want it to be. That was the entire premise of starting the newsletter and calling it is it Tuesday yet?—the original name. It’s not just about music, or movies, or politics, or poems, or my hot takes on what’s going on in the world.

It’s anything I want to type into a page.

Over the past year, I’ve rediscovered my love for reading. Growing up, I read like my parents were paying me to do it. I would read in the car, at home, on a boat, anywhere I was sitting for more than five minutes at a time.

As I grew older, I read less and less. “Life” started getting in the way of my regular reading.

When I was living alone after college, I tried to read before going to bed, but it never clicked. I’d read maybe one or two books a year, if any, and that was it.

But something happened over the last year, and it’s been beautiful to experience. Something re-ignited my love for reading, and I’ve been blowing through books like it was my job.

I think one of the biggest factors was that I started focusing on reading fiction again. I’ve found that so many people who are regular readers are just focusing on self-help, self-improvement, psychology, or work efficiency books. There’s a post we all come across on our feeds every so often with a picture of some books laid out on a table and the caption, “Read these 15 books to change your life forever.”

But when you look over the books, they’re all about gaining power, managing relationships, getting ahead in your job, or optimizing your schedule.

Everything is telling us what we should be, how we should act, and how we should improve ourselves.

I’m over that shit.

I want to promote good ol’ fashion FICTION. Stories that are completely made up, or made up based on real events. But a real STORY, not something that’s about training my brain to become better at tasks and taking notes.

I’m not saying self-help books are bad, I’ve read many of them and found them very useful. They’re so useful in fact, you don’t have to read all of them. They all cover the same handful of topics in one way or another.

When I was a kid, I saw my parents reading Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.

Today, that same book is called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.

History really is a circle, and many of the “lessons” people claim to have made up today are just ideas from an earlier time repackaged for a modern audience with modern inconveniences.

At some point, you need to stop trying to fix your life from something you read in a book and start actually doing the work. I can’t do that for you, but I hope one day you realize the beauty in getting lost in new worlds and things that are beyond what we can imagine happening in our everday lives.

Every so often we need an escape that’s not on our TV screens.

I also think fiction works best because the greatest lessons we learn are indirect ones. Despite what many people may want to believe, I don’t think we make the most significant changes when we’re told to do something. They happen when something unexpectedly clicks, and we realize what we need to do. For me, that usually happens when I immerse myself in a character’s story that isn’t my own.

So far this year, I’ve already read:

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone & Amal El-Mohtar ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Project by Courtney Summers ⭐️⭐️⭐️

If you want to follow everything I read and get the occasional book review, take a look at my profile on Storygraph (an independent platform that’s Black-owned and serves as a great alternative to Goodreads).

I’ve recently started reading It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. A book I purchased back in 2017 because it seemed relevant to the political climate of the moment. I tried to start reading it a few times, but it’s a bit dense and wordy for what I was looking for at the moment.

One thing I’ve noticed about books, and even TV shows and movies, is that we don’t always get to experience them when we want to experience them. Many times, we do it when the time is right. You start watching a show several times and never get into it. Then, one day, months, or years later, you try again and get hooked.

That’s what’s happening with this book for me.

To finish this email, I’d like to share a passage for you to read. One that I read recently, and it stuck with me for how relevant it is in 2025, even though the book was written in the 1930s and takes place between 1936 and 1939. Don’t worry about paying attention to any character names or names you might not be familiar with, just worry about the ones you do know and the overall idea.

I hope it resonates with you like it did for me.