Last year my pal Virginia Sole Smith published a week in the life of her newsletter: Burnt Toast. I found it mesmerising and was so impressed by how organised she was. And while we are nowhere near the scale of BT (or that level of organised), I thought it might be fun to do a little BTS of how this newsletter is made and everything that goes into it. This week wasn't entirely typical because I'm not working on any big pieces of writing; I'm in more of a research phase. Writing has a specific arc --> feel inspired by a great idea --> write down everything in my brain --> hit a wall and freak out about everything I've written --> eventually figure out where I went wrong (usually with some help) and ultimately have something worth publishing.
In a research phase I can get impatient and want to get to the writing part, but it's worth sinking in to to make sure I can look at things from as many different angles as possible. This sometimes means doing things that – as you'll see – cause great discomfort.
I also need to shout out the little team of folks who make this newsletter possible. Lucy Dearlove has been editing our podcast for around 18months now (I think?). And it's a treat to sit down with her every month to unpack whatever BS has been going on in the world of nutrition and feeding kids. She's just outside of that world enough to have some perspective and offer some interesting insight. If you haven't met Lucy yet, then check out this episode we did about cholesterol.
And Jennifer Nash has transformed my working week. She handles a lot of the BTS admin (subscription queries, analytics, charge disputes etc), as well as proof reading, background research, and formatting posts). I estimate she saves me about a day of work/week. Before she started I was working most weekends, so having her support has been invaluable. Because she is a nutrition person, she can help me with that side of things too. If you haven't met Jennifer yet, then check out this episode we did together about her MSc work on the NCMP, and her work on positive nutrition education with Body Happy Org.
Ok let's get into what a week looks like; this was last week 25th-29th Jan
Monday
Dave is heading to the office today so has to leave just after breakfast. I get A ready, then he listens to a podcast about Inky The Octopus for the 700th time while I get myself ready. We read a book for a few mins because we are uncharacteristically on time for a change. Then I drop him at school, run a quick errand, then get to my desk.
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