Moving the needle & taking advice
Experimenting with my limited time
As you grow older, you may notice it feels like you have less and less time. We still get 24 hours each day, but they feel shorter. And shorter. And then one day you’re much older and realize there were a bunch of things you wished you did.
I don’t want to have those regrets. I know some will be unavoidable, but I’m going to try to limit them, or at least ease those regrets by making some attempts at doing the things I want to do, even if I don’t have enough time.
One of those is writing.
I am a relatively slow writer. This short post with little thought put into it took entirely way too long. But the purpose it serves is to commit myself, to more tangibly mark the beginning of an experiment I think will help me write more, write faster, have a little fun, and in some small way, improve myself and my happiness.
As you may have noticed, it’s been months since my last post. I’ve been busy with the usual stuff: family, work, household chores, doctor visits, etc.
So here’s what I am going to try. When you sign up and start a Substack blog/newsletter/whatever this is, you are automatically subscribed to their tips and tricks style emails telling you how to grow your audience, increase engagement, etcetera. I’m going to do one of two things at least four days a week: for the precious 20 minutes or so I have during weekdays, I will attempt to follow Substack’s advice of the day and/or write about something on my mind.
For example: Substack recently emailed advice on how to “motivate readers to upgrade their subscription.” Since I have no subscribers yet, this seems like great advice and is perfectly suited for me and my situation.
Below is me following this advice, kind of:
Dear reader, what do you want from me?
Who do you think you are, and why do you care?
Why would you pay for this stuff?
As the very intelligent author of this Substack thing, allow me to answer those on your behalf:
You want to read good stuff. This is good stuff.
You think you are smart. I agree, you are smart because you are reading this, and you want to feel smarter. Together, we can feel increasingly smarter!
But there’s a catch (as a smart person, you saw this coming). You should upgrade your subscription to get the most out of it, and feel even smarter than the cheapskates.
I will now scramble to set up a paid subscription plan.
We’ll see how this experiment goes. I hope to pursue it at least until I have some notable results.
More discourse forthcoming.
Also, I’m going to incorporate an aesthetic theme into my Substack. Basically late 80s to early 00s computers & internet. For nostalgia & branding purposes, but mostly nostalgia. I will attempt to do this subtly and smoothly, but sometimes it’s just going to be completely out of place and I don’t care.
This is one of the first PCs I spent any significant time with:
I was very into computers at a young age thanks to my dad, but as a teenager chose to spend more time with friends and parties. Have no idea why I didn’t later pursue any computer-related degree in college, but I regret it and now so does my bank account.