I'm Starting a Newsletter

here we go again

“Here they go again, starting something new.” That’s probably what all of my besties are thinking. (I love you all ♥︎ Thank you for always being so supportive.)

Here I go again, starting something new: a newsletter.

how did we get here

Jokes aside, yes, I am starting a newsletter! At least for now. I’ve decided on a whim — per usual — that I am making a pact with myself:

I’m currently reading the book Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff, and in the book she introduces pacts as an easy way to bring curiosity back into your life. I’ve been feeling a little stuck recently with my creativity. So starting a pact felt like a simple, and easy way that I could get my creativity flowing again.

But what exactly is a pact? It’s defined in page 57 as follows:

A pact is a simple and repeatable activity that will inevitably bring you closer to achieving your authentic ambitions, regardless of the actual result of each trial.

The format is stupid simple: “I will [action] for [duration].”

un-pact-ing (?) my pact

As many of you who know me personally will attest to, I have a major tendency to overshoot, and overcommit. So we are going to start simple — really simple.

I’m saying publish newsletters because it’s easier to have a binary answer: did I do it or not? I was tempted to say write everyday instead, but then I have to think about what counts as writing — which is way more friction than my AuDHD brain can handle on the daily.

I’m picking 5 kind of arbitrarily, but it feels like a good number. It’s short enough that the reward of completion is not too far away, and it’s long enough that I can get a sense of whether writing newsletters is actually for me. The temptation to write 10, or 30 is very high but having failed so many commitments in the past, this feels more realistic.

about the newsletter

So what will I be writing about? To be honest, not sure yet — and that’s intentional.

All my past attempts at starting a project — like the Instagram about skateboarding, or stationary, or self help or, the million other ideas I’ve had — started with over planning.

• Who is this for?
• What the tone of my content?
• What are my brand colors?

In isolation, these aren’t bad things to think about. But when I get stuck in that zone, I lose interest quickly because I’m not actually doing the thing that made me excited in the first place: creating.

So that’s why this time I’m not planning ahead. I’m just starting, and seeing where this will lead.

Week one: check! See you next week.

Thanks for reading!