We’re a little conflicted about this Thing. It’s not exactly, well, a success? Well, let me tell you what happened, and you can judge.

This is part of our 100 Things in 2017 challenge. Click on the photos for a closer look!

At the beginning of the year, we bought a 1-year subscription to The New Yorker, a magazine whose articles we had been reading online for quite a while. The idea was to nudge ourselves out of our reading comfort zone, and learn about some topics we ordinarily wouldn’t.

When the issues started to arrive, we loved it. There’s a ton of great writing here, and some in-depth articles on fascinating topics. Like this one, about a photographer whose work you’ve probably seen and don’t know it. Or this more recent piece, about a family at the center of the U.S. opioid crisis. There’s so much good stuff here, including some political pieces that helped us broaden and deepen our views.

There was just one problem with this plan: volume. With the subscription, you get a full magazine every single week. Before long we were drowning in back issues, and never caught up; I’m still not caught up past April, and Becky, the most voracious reader I know, is three or four issues behind. (More like eight or nine…)

So we’re still counting this Thing on our list, even though we didn’t fully, 100% succeed with it. We still feel better off for having done it, and that’s what counts. We’re definitely going to continue reading articles from this publication, but not in a form where we feel constantly behind.