Building the plane while flying it

Welcome to "Church". I don't mean church in the traditional, religious way. I mean it more in the Sons of Anarchy way, where we sit around the table and talk about relevant business.

This is a thing that we're trying out. Not just "church" as a concept for a weekly weekend post, but Section 1904 as a whole. This company is the definition of "building the plane while flying it", a phrase that Google's AI results define as:

Developing a project or strategy iteratively, adapting and improving as you go, rather than having a fully planned approach from the outset.

Yeah, that feels right. Darren and I are trying to do a thing in San Diego that has never been done in San Diego and we don't want it to fail because we went into it with some preconceived notions of what it is or what it should be.

A fan-supported media company deserves leaders at the top that listen to the fans and adapt to what the community wants. So, without further ado, welcome to our very first paywall...

If you're reading this part, thank you for signing up for Section 1904.

I know we've said thank you a lot in the first couple of weeks here, but I'm going to try and remember to keep doing it. Not everyone who is signing up was here last week to receive those thank yous. If things are working the way they're supposed to, there should be at least some percentage of readers and listeners that discovered Section 1904 in the last couple of days and decided it was good enough to sign up.

Now, onto church. What the hell is church? It's a little peak behind the curtain of what we're working on and what I'm doing in the time when you aren't hearing me on a podcast or reading my writing.

But it's not a one-way street! If you're reading this post, it means you are a member that can login to this website and comment at the bottom of this article. You'll see why that's important in a moment.

Coming this week

(More) Guests - Yeah, we heard you. Darren Smith is awesome at interviewing people and his interview with Richard Deitsch was praised far and wide, rightfully so. We'll try to work in at least one of those per week, going forward.

A place for community discussions - Not everything needs to be done in the comments and via email/social media. Darren and I have talked about doing a WhatsApp group for Section 1904 members, but I have yet to figure out a way to do it that doesn't reveal everyone's phone numbers to each other. If I can't, I'll look at Discord and some other options for this community to talk amongst itself. If you have ideas, we want to hear them now. I'll be starting up something this week.

The rest of the social media - I added Section 1904 to Bluesky and Twitter last week. I will add it to Instagram this week and maybe create a Facebook page, although I'm not sure if that is useful to anyone? Opinions are welcome in the comments!

Template change? - One of the cool things about Ghost is that I can change the look and feel of the website with a click of a button. I've gotten a couple of complaints about the site, starting with the fact that the byline shows up at the bottom of articles instead of the top, and I'm going to look into some other ones to see if there's one that fits us better (or if I should try to make a custom one). If the site looks different in a couple of days, that's why.

Thing I'm still trying to figure out - Private podcasts have not been emailed out yet because nobody has been charged yet, but also...

I'm trying to see if there is a way to do our private podcast that would make it accessible through Spotify. It seems like there might be a way to do a private podcast on Spotify if you host with them (which is fine) but I can't seem to figure out how to do it yet because I don't see a way that I can sync members of Section 1904 with people that can access the episodes on Spotify and they don't even let me play with these tools at all until we have a certain number of "followers" for the podcast on Spotify, which we have not hit because we are still very new. Trying to get this to work will take up more of my week than I am comfortable admitting.

What I'm doing

Because I rarely get a chance to talk about this shit and it always seems to get the conversation going when I do, here's a list of what's going on in my life...

What I'm watching

Please watch The Pitt. I am begging you. It is the reason that I turned my MAX subscription back on and I could not be more thrilled with that decision.

I imagine it is going to be a very different experience to binge through this season than to wait through the 10,020 agonizing minutes between the episodes each week and it's one that I intend on trying out after this season is over.

It's probably not for everyone. If television is your happy escape and you want to avoid something real and dark, by all means, skip it. If you don't like gore, it'll be a tough hang but also worth it. For everyone else, prepare to get your heart broken in the way that only the best TV shows can pull off.

What I'm listening to

My favorite thing about Father John Misty is that you either love him or hate him or, like me, you vacillate back and forth between the two. I will go months of listening to him more than anything else and then follow it up with months of not being able to stand him or his music at all. I once saw him at a festival and left in a fit of rage about halfway through the set because it was so bad. And I've also had religious experiences listening to him through headphones.

Anyway, I've been listening to a lot of Father John Misty lately.

See y'all in the comments!