Step 1 half done; that was the easy part

Yesterday, I decided to tackle the easy content creation for Substack first, and I now have four weeks' worth of content for my Wednesday posts (The Entertaining, i.e., games and puzzles). I decided to employ a feature that all Substackers have access to: the "insert paywall" option that allows you to give your free subscribers a partial free preview of coming paid content, a bit like the old gesture of the gorgeous woman in a slitted dress who eyes you enticingly and "shows some leg." Like that gorgeous woman, my goal is, of course, to suck your soul dry (if $5/month is soul-sucking), but I'm hoping you won't notice that as you're being entertained. Today, I'll be generating another five weeks' worth of content (enough to get me through April), and that'll be that for The Entertaining.

The next move is to generate content for The Creative, which normally publishes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This, too, should be easy to generate since I'm relying on a lot of old-but-original content from the blog. But unlike The Entertaining, which comes out only once a week, The Creative comes out twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays, as I said), so generating that content will still take up all of tomorrow (Sunday).

Either today or tomorrow, I also have to repopulate my scheduled YouTube posts. I need about three hours to schedule two weeks' worth of posts.

Next week, with The Creative and The Entertaining done, I can concentrate on generating posts for my flagship project—my grammar curriculum/campaign. That means generating posts for The Superficial  (a.k.a. Bad Online English) and The Profound. These both come out on Mondays and Fridays. With only a couple of exceptions, The Superficial has no quizzes and isn't really a curriculum—it's just random encounters with memes I find online (mostly at Instapundit) or on my phone (ebooks, etc.). This is why I call that section of my Substack "The Superficial": it's a mere series of glimpses into language, not building up to anything. There's nothing deep, meaningful, or coherent going on. In contrast is The Profound, which is an actual grammar curriculum (quizzes and all), currently being built from the ground up. As of now, this section has around 55 posts that cover nouns, verbs, verb tenses, grammatical mood, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, interjections, and prepositions. Coming soon: punctuation—periods, commas, hyphens/dashes, question marks, and other marks (quotes, asterisks, exclamation points). After that, we'll finally start the sentence-level grammar: types of phrases, types of clauses, types of sentences, and types of discourse. After that, there'll be material on common grammatical/writing errors, rhetorical devices (tricolon, hyperbole, etc.), poetical terms/devices (rhyme, rhythm, meter, iamb, trochee, spondee, anapest, etc.), and language quirks (different from, different to, different than). That should take us to about the end of the year and possibly into 2027, and all of that material ought to cover the very basics of good grammar. I'll have to decide whether to add units on writing technique after that, but I think that that might end up being its own curriculum (if I have the energy to write it). Aside from that, I also need to be generating interactive quizzes for every unit I create.

I can't afford to think too hard about the future of my Substack efforts, but if my target audience is younger folks in need of language help and blessed/cursed with a sense of humor, then Substack is, frankly, the wrong platform for me to be on: it's mostly crotchety old people like me, most of whom think they know enough about grammar and writing to get along just fine (which usually isn't true: old people tend to be sloppy, arrogant, passive-aggressive, and immune to correction). All the kids are on TikTok, despite TikTok's having started off as (and still being) Chinese spyware. Do I take the plunge and seal a pact with the Devil by joining the ranks of TikTok? I really don't want to, but if my target audience is there while I'm stuck here, I may have no choice but to hold my nose and do it. My instinct will be to maintain a minimal presence on TikTok because I'm a grouchy old fart with no use for the medium, but there's always the chance that TikTok will prove fruitful.

Meanwhile, with May approaching, I have to consider going back to university work. Yay. For the moment, though, I've got enough on my plate to worry about. Let's just try to get through March and April (oh—I've got a 146K walk in March!) with my sanity intact.

To sum up—

This weekend: Work on five weeks' content for The Entertaining (through April).
Also this weekend: Repopulate scheduled posts for the blog.
This coming week, Mon-Tue: Create eight weeks' content for The Creative.
This coming week, Wed-Sat: Create eight weeks' content for The Superficial.
3/1-3/7: Create eight weeks' content for The Profound.
3/8-3/14: Get back to creating the first movie-review book.
3/16-3/20: Walk the Geumgang bike path. (This year's "long" walk, only 146 km.)
3/21-end of March: Finish creating the movie-review book.

Right. Time to get moving.