The Artsy Honker

I have a mailing list, "Passing Notes", which I attempt to post to monthly but generally don't get around to posting to. I currently use Mailchimp for it, and I think that's part of the problem: it turns writing a newsletter into an exercise in finding the right picture and messing about with formatting and so on, when really I just want to say "hey, this is what I've been up to this month!" to people who don't want to read my blog every day or every week or whatever. I was thinking of switching to Tinyletter and then they got taken over by Mailchimp anyway, and I'm just not sure what's involved in the conversion, and part of me thinks I really ought to be running my own mailserver and so on anyway and then it gets all tangled up with the thing where I am still using gmail and would like to move away from that. Augh.
( cut for length, it gets interesting later, I promise )