5 years of Hello Computer

While working on BlogoWriMo 5 years ago, an event in November where you write and publish a daily blog post, the thought occurred to me that I should start a newsletter. So I did. This week, this newsletter turned 5. Thank you for reading, tipping, emailing, commenting, and supporting the thoughts that probably should have stayed in my head.

Over the past five years, Hello Computer has found its purpose. I’ve documented my struggle with being autistic in a world built for non-autistic people. The process has helped me figure out where being autistic helps me but also where it holds me back and ways to work around it. While thinking about those issues, I realised there was a gap in my diagnosis. Some of the issues I was having were outside the autism spectrum, and after becoming super interested in ADHD because autism, I realised I had ADHD.

During the lockdown years, I had plenty of time to consider who I was/am, and the thoughts led me to realise how important being a curious photographer was/is to me. I work in the arts and culture sector. Being commissioned to photograph new work, meet new people and discuss art and ideas without judgement, without being seen as “weird”, is healthy for me. My autistic side loves cameras, and my ADHD loves the new experience. Put them together, and I function in the world. Unfortunately, it’s a world that requires you to be good at networking and business to be commissioned, which is where my neurodivergent brain fails.

Another realisation I had during lockdown was that I’m non-binary. All those “weird” thoughts that I kept to myself or occasionally talked to with my wife were not weird at all. They had a name and, more importantly, a community. I came out through this newsletter, writing around 6,000 words on my experience. On a good day, I go outside with a colourful beard, lipstick, and eyeliner on while wearing a skirt. It’s usually fine, sometimes incredibly empowering and sometimes depressingly scary.

You could argue that all this should be a diary rather than a public-facing newsletter hoping to have enough paid subscriptions to buy cat food. That might be the healthy thing to do instead of throwing out every thought into the world. I mean, I’ve talked about skinny dipping, pondering being a life model and wondered if going to a naturist beach would be less anxiety-triggering than swimming with harmless jellyfish. There are a lot of thoughts in my head due to ADHD, and oversharing is a classic autistic trait. If you missed me in a thong, enjoy classic oversharing.

While a lockable diary might be better in some ways, it would cause two problems. First, it might imply that these past 5 years have been something I was ashamed to share with the world. I’m not, but I may have been in the past. How would people treat you if they knew you were depressed or anxious all the time? Would I lose work because I openly talked about challenging my body confidence issues by wearing a swimming thong to a New Year’s Day dip? I held back my life because of that fear. “What if?” It is my life’s work to overcome that fear and grow as a person. There is no shame there.

The second reason why this newsletter is more important than a secure diary is because people get to read it. Over the years, I’ve had various emails from people telling me that it’s helped them in some way. This is what I love about writing here, and it’s one of the reasons I’m open about myself. I never figured out I was non-binary, autistic, or had ADHD by staring at kettles. Sure, there are some nice kettles out there, but they didn’t offer me the answers. Personal stories from people who were brave enough to be open about themselves that’s what led me to have a better understanding of myself.

To quote Q from Star Trek.

“...you were open to options you had never considered. That is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.” - All good things.

This newsletter it helps me, and sometimes it helps someone else. If there’s any reason as to why we exist, it’s to improve on what came before us. We talk, open up, share, connect, learn and we move forward... sometimes in a thong.

Behind the scenes

Doing a single issue of Hello Computer takes around 6-8 hours.

• 2-3 hours to write/edit
• Find photos in archives
• Write alt-text
• Find links
• Put together in CMS
• Publish
• Promote on social media

The building of the newsletter is always in flux. Currently, I write the bulk of it in iA Writer for macOS, which is saved into Dropbox. At one point, I used Ulysess, which syncs over iCloud so I could edit on any device I wanted. However, I’ve found iCloud Drive syncing to be unreliable compared to Dropbox, so iA Writer became my editor of choice. I use Grammarly on macOS to check the text in iA Writer. It was built into Ulysess, which was nice. Apple Intelligence has proofreading features, but it doesn’t show the changes made, and I would prefer to accept/decline each change.

I rarely have writer’s block, which might be because I write about what’s currently on my mind. Somehow, I write best with music on, even music with words. It’s good background noise that keeps the dopamine flowing and the sensory overload low. The process normally takes a few hours to write/edit around 1,000 words. I never set a word count goal. Pieces generally take shape naturally and are usually around 1,000 words for some reason.

Links are collected in an app called Anybox, which is available on iOS and macOS. No matter what I’m using, I can save a link to an interesting site to easily retrieve when I put the newsletter together. A nice feature of Anybox is that you can customise how it outputs a selection of links. It saves a lot of hassle from copying/pasting each link from the browser.

I use Ghost to build, email and host the newsletter. The CMS is free, but the hosting costs. My portfolio host is pretty good, but Ghost does not run well on it, so I had to use another service. Digital Ocean is great, but it was costing me £20/month. Now, I’m using PikaPods at around £2.50/month. It’s great.

Ghost does not have any template features, but you can make a draft post and save the contents as a snippet. When I make a new post, I use that snippet to get started and fill in the gaps. By crafting the post in the CMS, I can do little bits at a time if I’m having a busy photography week.

Once that’s all done, I schedule/post the newsletter and begin promotion via social media. I’ve tried to find automated ways of doing this, but most services cost money. At the moment, I have an automation in Zapier that watches an RSS feed for a new post and then publishes it to Facebook. On the free account, you can run five automations, and I plan to use those for publishing Hello Computer and Stargazer to Meta platforms. On the good side of the web, I use a service called EchoFeed by indie developer Robb Knight. It’s $25 a year, or $20 if you’re a member of omg.lol. This service will publish to Mastodon and Bluesky for me. There’s also an app for iOS called Crossiant that lets you cross-post to Mastodon/Threads/Bluesky. Posting to social media is messy as hell, and my workflow needs a rethink.

The hardest part of all is growing the audience. For the first half of the year, I was getting two new sign-ups a month. Nothing after July for some reason. In 2021, I managed to get one new sign-up. 1 in that entire year. It’s hard. I’m a newspaper stand in a field where there’s no passing traffic. Would this be easier on Substack? Yes, but they can’t say that their site is Nazi-free. Mine is. My site supports indie publishing and development. It does not line the pockets of tech bros. I’m not alone in doing this. Platformer newsletter also left and has found it harder away from Substack.

5 more years?

What will the 10th anniversary post look like? Will I be a full time writer? Book deal? Free cake? I’m guessing no. I would be completely happy with sustainability. Enough paid subscribers to help with the bills. That would be great. How do I achieve this? More thong photos? No idea. I’ll keep pondering things about living as a non-binary disabled autistic person with ADHD and I’ll try to keep it fun.

Once again, thank you for reading and following along. Live long and prosper. 🖖

LINKS

• “…trans posters were the earliest adopters of Bluesky and.... “…trans posters were the earliest adopters of Bluesky and were able to forge the platform into what it is today: funny
• Are Skirts for Men Truly Groundbreaking and Gender-Defying?. Here, we delve into the historical and contemporary relationship between the garment and masculinity.
• Here’s everything you need to know about the Trans Day of Remembrance vigil. Not A Phase has organised events across the UK to create its largest mass vigil to date
• deleting twitter. good riddance
• Hannah Gadsby, Douglas and Autistic Representation. The importance of Hannah Gadsby and her work for autistic people in witnessing embodied representation, at a global level, is immeasurable.
• Celebrating 40 Years of DaDa And Their Ongoing Fight For Disability Arts - Uncover Liverpool. For 40 years, DaDa has led the way in amplifying Disability and Deaf arts, creating transformative platforms for disabled artists. We spoke with Interim CEO