The year is almost 1/12th over, and so much has happened.

A Good Silence

I intended to write more about ChatGPT, but a few things happened.

• 🎄Christmas break: I hope you all enjoyed your break not ignoring the posts that I didn't send to your email inbox.

• 🧪Causation Isn't Correlation: Fundamentally, ChatGPT is a correlation engine. It gathers what the internet generally has to say about something. It is a more complex Google search.

• Smart Brevity: I read Smart Brevity (thanks for the recommendation, Sean). Let's be honest. The great sorrow of a legit writer who finds himself online is that the vast majority of his audience will only read one hundred of his words. So, you have options:

  • You can ✒️ write for that like I'm doing here. (Is it working?)

  • Or, you can damn the canons 🏴‍☠️ and write prose for a smaller audience. (I still do that in other places.)

• ChatGPT will excel at Smart Brevity-style posts. And this isn't necessarily bad if you value a broad reading audience. In fact, companies like Axios HQ and Notion are incorporating ChatGPT in their software.

Four Hundred

I passed the four hundred coaching hours mark. For those of you I've coached, it's been a privilege.

I'm only more excited about doing this coaching thing.

Launch 🚀

We launched Grimké Bible College.

• Because I work with a great team, the launch has been superb.

• Looking for a thirty-six-hour Bible College degree that is all online and one you can start on any given Monday . . . with me as your academic dean? Get in touch.

One Hundred

I wrote my first online digital product—a 100-Day Planning Guide for the first 100 days of 2023. It's freemium, so if you're interested, grab a copy.

Parting Quote

Seriously, I’m super uncomfortable with this format. Everything every essayist I’ve ever read taught me runs counter to everything I did in this newsletter.

But . . . you may have read this far. That, my friend, is a win and may justify more newsletters written this way. If you read these last sentences, would you let me know in the comments or by email, text, or direct message? A writer without an audience is just journaling. I don’t mind journaling, but if I’m going to write, I’d rather it be helpful to someone.