I Try My Best To Be Consistent. I Really Try.
Restarting my creative pursuits after a long break
On the 2nd of this month, I celebrated my half-year wedding anniversary. After experiencing significant life changes, constant travel, and many other changes, I finally feel at home.
This sense of peace was exactly what I needed to reignite my creative pursuits. Balancing marriage, a 9-to-5 job and my business endeavors were quite challenging.
Being a grown-up sucks sometimes.
With freedom comes responsibility and plenty of unaccounted work. I could write a magnum opus on this, but that's a topic for another day.
With the limited time I could spare for my writing, I managed to publish a few blogs and read 100+ pages.
The break was catastrophic for my blog and self-confidence. But here we are trying to build back brick by brick, one word at a time. However, it helped me gain clarity about my creative pursuits and how to balance them while adulting.
I Try My Best To Be Consistent
This morning, I was listening to Seth Godin talking about his consistency. He has written a blog post every day for over a decade. He mentioned that he doesn't use ChatGPT; he rewrites everything that doesn't sound like him.
I strive to be consistent, like Seth. I try, but I also fail. I fail because:
My expectations of myself are too high.
My metrics for judging success and failure are flawed.
I'm still learning to adapt to my new life.
I have very little time left for myself to write and grow my business.
Before marriage, I had 24 hours all to myself, with no concerns about groceries, menu decisions, dealing with maids, or managing an entire household. After marriage, all these are now on my plate. I now remember every word my mom used to say before
I managed to jot down a few thousand words while sitting in airport lounges, sipping coffee, or waiting for food. Despite consistent efforts, I struggled to publish consistently. I could have used ChatGPT and scheduled any soulless piece, but this newsletter is my safe space where I share things I don't post anywhere else on the Internet.
Here's the life update! Despite being away from the newsletter, I've been conducting personal experiments because life can be quite dull without them. Here's a highlight of my ongoing experiments:
Posting on LinkedIn
Navratri fasting (I'm doing it for the first time, and it's been eye-opening).
Experimenting with an idea that I'll share soon 🤞
Crazy Stuff I Discovered During This Break I stumbled upon some amazing things that I can't wait to share with you in the coming weeks. But the most important lesson I've learned and want to share is this:
Momentum >>> Quality
I want you to remember this as you plan for 2024.
Momentum is more important than quality.
When you lose momentum, it takes extra time to produce high-quality work, and even then, quality is subjective.
In another world
I've been struggling to finish "Midnight Library" for months, but I'm hoping to complete it this year. It starts quite slowly.
I am running multiple experiments currently. I am on a 9-day fast for Navratri and it’s been an enriching experience. Will be sharing my experience next week.
I am spending a lot of time away from my phone and it’s revealing my co-dependency on my phone 🥲
Will share the documented results in the upcoming editions of the newsletter.
A few pieces I published during this break
Starting next week, I'll reintroduce my weekly finds.
If you have any questions for me, please drop them in the comments, and I'll make sure to reply to all of them.
I hope you enjoyed reading this email as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Until next time,
Love and light
Shreya