An update

And photos of home-grown tomatoes in shirts.

Hi, it’s me, your friendly Denver-based freelance writer, editor, and recipe tester. If you’re new around here and this is the first time you’re hearing from me, welcome!

The last time I sent a newsletter — more than a year ago — I was about to embark on a journey that will be familiar to any human living through the 2020s, but especially millennials who are also freelancers (or worse, “creatives”).

I was burnt out in general, but mostly with food and writing. I had no long term projects lined up (in other words I had very little anticipated income).

I spiraled.

All I could do was lie on the bed with my head where my feet normally go, stare at the ceiling, and quietly panic while thinking really useful and productive things like: “What is even the point?” “Doesn’t food writing feel like it’s all for clicks and money and bragging rights?” “Shouldn’t we take a little more care with the ingredients we’re recommending people use while the world is literally burning up?” “Does every writer just like to hear themselves talk?”

To get out of this funhouse of dread, I got a part-time job.

In retrospect it seems remarkably simple: I found a position as a prep cook at a local meal delivery service, I emailed them, I went in for an interview and test run, I got the job.

But it felt simple thanks to a combination of timing, luck, and skills learned from spending basically my whole life in or near a kitchen.

(I have to remind myself that just because something is “easy” doesn’t minimize its value. Like it’s “easy” for me to do my various jobs because I’ve spent years honing those skills.)

So that’s why the newsletter went dormant: my work week is now freelancing Mondays to Wednesdays, prep cooking Thursdays and Fridays. Three days of freelancing means I’m forced to be efficient and also that I don’t have loads of extra time to work on “building my brand” (← annoyed air quotes), i.e. sending newsletters.

But! I know deep down that future Kara would probably benefit from having some online presence beyond an already infrequent Instagram and slim LinkedIn. This Kara of the future wants to write books and do other cool shit that she hasn’t yet thought of. She needs people to remember she exists and cares about subscriber conversion rates. She is great at marketing and loves to be on panel discussions and has really, really honed her “brand.”

🫠

All that to say, for the foreseeable future, needs more salt will be update-oriented: I am currently doing cool things that I’d like to share and I hope you’ll find them interesting. Sometimes there will be recipes or recipe-adjacent newsletters because I do genuinely enjoy telling people about tasty food and how to make it. Perhaps there will be the occasional travel-related dispatch. Maybe I’ll just write whatever the hell I want because I also genuinely enjoy writing and I’m old enough to remember blogs before SEO ruined them and I like to be VOICY.

Until next time (it won’t be so long).