Well, hi. This is new and fun, isn’t it?
I’ve be thinking about changing how I send these emails for a while now. Last year was the first time I prioritized sending out my newsletter consistently, and it brought me so much joy and fulfillment. The act of sitting down to write the essays themselves helped me grow and understand myself better (and become a better writer, I think), and the feedback I received from readers was meaningful and impactful — the best bonus to a weekly habit I truly enjoyed. It helped me feel more deeply connected to strangers and to myself, and helped remind me what happens when you allow yourself to be vulnerable. Every time I gave myself a couple hours to write the emails instead of working on something else, it felt like a gift. Every time someone took a second out of their day to reply to what I wrote by sharing their own experiences with grief, or self-doubt, or body image, I was overwhelmed with gratitude.
When I started writing the newsletters, I used the same email list platform I had been signed up for since I went freelance. It worked well, but it’s a service that is built for marketing and selling products via email. There are a million options for funnels and pitches and how to use email to market courses and products and services. There was a time in my life when I thought that all of that was important to me, or at least it felt like a goal worth chasing, but not anymore. As I realized toward the end of last year, when it really came down to it, all I wanted to do was write.
I get asked “what I do” pretty regularly, and for a long time I would say “freelance writer and content creator,” always cringing at the last part. When I first went freelance, I had a clear vision: I would freelance and eventually teach other people to freelance, too. Brand partnerships and “content creation” (AKA influencer stuff) would be a way to boost my income on the side. Over the years, my income streams have shifted and evolved, grown in some areas and shrunk in others, and not always in ways I wanted or knew what to do with. As it turns out, when you say yes to almost everything, this tends to happen.
At some point along the way, I simply started to do it all. I wanted to do YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and a newsletter and courses and writing and podcasting. I wanted to figure out the best way to optimize affiliate sales and links and, well, everything. I wanted to hack it all. Most of the time, I couldn’t stick with any of it, though. I thought it was because I just wasn’t any good at it, or wasn’t focused enough, but the truth is that, for a lot of it, my only motivation for doing more of it was money, or the perception of having a “real” job that people could understand. I was proud of myself for finding success independently after leaving what was once my “dream job,” but I was also grappling with the reality that perhaps doing it all wasn’t my dream job, either. So I started to ask myself what I really wanted.
Surprisingly, the answer was clear to me immediately. I wanted to simplify. And I wanted to dig deeper. I want a simple, deep life. I want to do work that fulfills me, and I want to make decisions that allow me to prioritize that work. I want to figure out a way to live that supports that. This doesn’t mean that I can say no to every piece of work I said yes to before. I’m not in a place for that right now, and that’s OK. Because I know I’m working toward that place.
So no more big fancy email marketing machine. No more freelance courses and consulting. Fewer Instagram partnerships. Less soulless freelance work. Less strategy. Less social media presence that feels contrived or forced and less time spent trying to manipulate the branding of it all. More of the simple stuff, the good stuff, the things that make me feel like me without money, without followers, without strangers telling me I’m doing a good job. The stuff that requires me to dig a little bit deeper.
Substack keeps asking me to tell people what this newsletter is about in this first post, to explain what these emails will cover, and if we’re being honest my first instinct is to answer the question. To craft the one-sentence pitch of it. To brand it. I’ve had the same thought about myself for years, after all. Makeup! Skin care! Fashion! No — plus size fashion! Body positivity! No — body neutrality! Reading! Home decor! All of it! All the time! I’ve spun my wheels for years, trying to narrow it all down to something that can fit inside an easy-to-digest Instagram bio. But I want less of that in 2023, too. Less of that for good.
So, yes, I could put this newsletter neatly in a box. I could give it a memorable title, a fancy image, a memorable tagline, an optimized SEO description. But I’m much more interested in where it will be this time next year if I don’t. Of what will happen if I allow it to simply be.
More soon. And thank you, always, for being along for the ride.
This month, a portion of subscriber proceeds will go toward PROJECT HOPE’s fund for humanitarian relief after the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
Very excited to be on this journey with you Olivia! Just signed up for the year!