Inspired by similar lists and logs from Khoi Vinh, Steven Soderbergh, and Jason Kottke, I’ve started keeping track of the media I consume in 2019. As a reader, Kottke’s “media diet” posts are the level of detail and formality I enjoy most, but I suspect I’d have a hard time keeping up with it as a writer, at least until I’ve gotten into the habit a bit. Instead, I’m going to start off modeling it after Soderbergh’s list, with occasional commentary mixed in. I’ve just backfilled the year to date (having been keeping track in my Field Notes book so far this year). I’ll be updating it as I go, rather than doing retrospective write-ups; I suspect that’ll limit the types of commentary I can provide, but will make it more likely that I do it.

I also enjoy Kottke’s framing of this as a “media diet”. Not in the “I’m going to drop some weight” meaning, but in the “what you consume” meaning. It’s a good way to think of it, and we ought to pay at least as much attention to what we put into our minds as we do what we put into our bodies.