Happy One Year Anniversary

wowow I've been writing this substack for a whole year. In this post I'm recapping one year of writing, what I've learned, and what's coming next.

Dear Friends,

On a quiet Saturday morning last December I decided, rather impulsively, to start this Substack. It wasn’t something I had been planning to do or even thinking about. But I was at a holiday party the night before talking with a friend who has his own substack about our mutual love of the internet for being an infinite source of learning and inspiration, and how we both had gotten so many benefits from actively engaging on platforms - him on substack, me on twitter. You might also remember last December as being right in the midst of the Elon twitter takeover and everyone seemed to be exiting and moving to substack.

So while I was not at all planning on starting a substack, I woke up that Saturday morning with an impulse to go for it.

How it started, on a Saturday in December

And here we are, 12 months later, and I’m still doing it. This newsletter has become a surprising source of joy in my life and rewarding in ways I didn’t expect.

In this post I’ll recap my first year writing on substack, what I’ve learned, and what I plan to do next.

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How It Started - The Experiment

I approached starting a substack as a safe-to-fail experiment, which is just another way of saying “I don’t know, but let’s find out.” I didn’t have a plan or specific goals on that first day. I was already finding tweeting and blogging to be rewarding, so I thought why not try a substack (seemed like everyone else was doing it) and see what sort of benefits I might get from it.

My hypothesis, as I wrote about in my first post, was that substack could be a better platform for journaling and bookmarking - “a written record of things I’ve found interesting in the past, as if it’s an external hard drive or an old journal to refer back to.”

Choosing the Name

Some of the Things is a play on the Do All The Things meme. I have broad and diverse interests, and I wanted to be able to write about anything that I was getting into - whether it was devops, crypto, starting a consulting business, raising kids, wellness, spirituality, science, investing, or women’s empowerment.

But of course, no one has time for ALL the things, but we can always make time for SOME of the things.

Some of the Things is the opposite of Do All The Things

The Evolution of the Format

As I wrote in my first post, the original format was to be “a place to compile short thoughts and/or lists of links of some of the things I’m finding interesting.” Inspired by

Ash Thaker

’s Weekend Reads, I thought I would share a collection of interesting finds across the internet with my personal commentary sprinkled in.

I more of less kept this format through the year - some posts had more personal commentary, some were more loose collections of links, some had themes, and some were random.

The goal in the beginning was simply “let’s see if there are any benefits to substack” and I set a target to write twice a month because like in any good science experiment - you need to collect enough data to evaluate results.

Somewhere along the way, the goal changed to “let’s develop a writing habit” and I committed even harder to writing twice a month.

The Year in Numbers

• 3-4 hours, on average, to write each post, though some I got out in 1-2 hours, and some took upwards of 6-8 hours

• 23 total posts over 12 months (7 months with 2 posts, 3 months with 1, and 2 months with 3)

• I got 4 subscribers after my first post and today I have 66

  

• The post with the most views was Sweet 16, with 141, and the post with the least views was Some of the things #9 with 36 views

Learnings and Reflections

• I love it. It’s been rewarding in ways I didn’t expect. The benefits are more subtle and internal than tangible or external. It’s hard to articulate, but it just feels good to have a regular writing practice and that was not at all what I was expecting when I started this substack a year ago.

• I built a habit. Substack seems to be the perfect platform for the goal of developing a writing habit. I had been publishing blogs on Medium, but they tended to be more formal and required more deliberate thought; there was no forcing function to keep me coming back to turn it into a habit. On the other end of the content spectrum I was tweeting a lot and that certainly became a habit, but there wasn’t much deliberate thought to what I was writing. Writing on Substack is the perfect balance between the two - more informal than blogging platforms like Medium but requires more thought and attention than firing off a tweet. It’s a perfect goldilocks zone for developing a writing habit.

Substack is the Goldilocks Zone for developing a writing habit

• It’s nice to have an audience. While I’m not trying to optimize for more subscribers and want to continue writing for myself, I’ve learned that having an audience is a powerful tool for accountability. Having subscribers and writing publicly holds me accountable in a way that writing in a private journal never would. I’m truly grateful to everyone who subscribes and is supporting my journey. And whether you actually read this or not, just knowing that people can read it makes me put a little more effort and keeps me coming back.

Next Steps

The experiment is over, but the writing must go on. I will continue this substack for the foreseeable future, hopefully long enough to write a year two recap next December.

For now, I’ll continue with the same format - an informal, public journal of what I’m getting into - with a target to publish 2 per month. I’ll continue to publish more formal writings on other platforms, and will continue to share more informal thoughts on Farcaster and X.

Questions:

• Should I experiment with any paid subscriber benefits or always keep it free?

• Do you have any requests or suggestions for things I should explore or do with this substack?

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Thank you for supporting my writing and journey. If you’d like to get in touch you can reply to me here, or find me on X and Farcaster.

Until next time, keep putting good into the world. —adrienne🌏❤️