This is my 1,000th newsletter?!
Oh, hi friends!
I got nervous after writing my 999th newsletter. “The next one’s gotta be good. How can I sum it all up? What will feel valuable?”
So, of course, I didn’t write anything. LOL.
But that runs counter to the point of this newsletter, and how it got started. To act as a record, a creative diary, to share successes and failures and lemur adventures and hope you might see yourself in them. To organize my brain and the various articles, photos, quotes, books, and people that pass through it daily, to filter and curate randomness into something less baggy and hopefully useful.
That’s why I write a newsletter. And it’s taken awhile (a thousand issues, I guess?) to appreciate it can be “just” that. Because it brought me to all of you.
I once got advice from a newsletter expert to dig into a niche and figure out what I wanted to sell — courses, ads, the newsletter itself. “Who is it for? Define your audience!”
But why? That’s never been the goal. The goal is to bridge the gap between my experience and your experience and to say, hello, isn’t it nice we can meet in the middle on this rickety bridge for a few brief moments during another weekday? The goal is to show you something and for you to either see yourself reflected in that something — or not. Maybe you will on Monday and maybe you won’t on Tuesday. People like to define audiences using nouns: millennials obsessed with pop culture, writers and creators, political junkies. But you are verb people. You’re trying. I’m trying. We’re starting and digging and trying together.
Writing this newsletter saw me through the highs and lows of freelancing, a fellowship at an advertising agency, learning how to write musicals, multiple editing jobs, meeting Colin (!), and too many projects to name, from scripts and plays to musicals and poetry. It brought me Do It For Yourself and somehow coerced me to get through the last 18 months.
But “it” hasn’t done all of that, of course. It was knowing that you, my newsletter friends, might open it in the morning and alight on an idea or link that felt meaningful to you. Some days my family might respond, or a frequent reader from across the country, or an old colleagues. It’s just…nice, is what it is. It’s a nice little corner of the world to share with my friends.
Writing 1,000 newsletters also simply made me write. After 400,000+ words (yes, really!) I’m faster, better, more concise (not counting this edition). And it’s trained my brain to notice ideas, concepts, or phrases to share. I’m always hunting and gathering for you, and for myself.
Then writing and sharing these thoughts with strangers, friends, and family has made me brave.
You can’t care what people will think. You can only write and share something new tomorrow.
I started this before I knew what it was, before I was ready, with a list of 40 subscribers and a fuzzy idea in my head.
You’re never ready, is the thing. And the idea might remain a little fuzzy. But now I know that if you keep writing, the words will add up, and so will your life.
Thank you for being here for the first thousand. On to the next!
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You can also support my work by checking out my motivational journal, Do It For Yourself, designed to guide you through your creative and work projects.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara