I Am Not In the Business of Growth

I’m going a bit behind the scenes to share some of what’s been going on internally over the past few months. And maybe this doesn’t fit into any plan, but you know what, sometimes I really hate strategy. Sometimes I really hate having to think about return on investment, and goals, and do-you-really-like-me. Sometimes I just need to get something down and out. I’ve usually found it’s the best way to leave it behind.

So here goes.

I turned paid subscriptions on a few months ago, after experimenting with this newsletter and showing up every week for more than half a year. 5-10%, I was told, is the Substack benchmark for free subscribers becoming paid ones. (Substack is the platform I use to run this newsletter; it’s also sort of like a blog, and more recently, a social media platform.) I aimed low. 5%. Aim low and it’s hard to be disappointed, right? Engagement seemed high so 5% seemed like a safe bet.

But after multiple reminders, an early bird rate, and publishing some of my favourite posts so far, I’m not even average, nowhere near middle of the tier, and not even at the bare minimum.

Sometimes you get a gut feeling, true or false, that everyone’s doing so much better. And sometimes, you get numerical evidence.

This is not a woe-is-me post, by the way, nor a cry for tactical advice. I had/have a list of to-dos and to-tries. But I know the difference between trying to bring 5% up to 10%, and getting close to it in the first place. It was a clear signal: this is not working.

After the disappointment, I tried to keep writing. I’ve always written and shared things and that process has always been good to me. It practically built my entire career; why would it be any different this time? Why wouldn’t it be exponentially better if I just kept doing it consistently, as so many have touted as the secret to success?

But I kept writing half-drafts, not having the grit to finish and press send.

Some days, it felt like what I had written was too much. As news of genocide and war broke out, other times it seemed like not enough. Either way, I was paralyzed. I wasn’t even aiming for perfect. I was aiming for truth, but that felt like a squishy thing I was still in the midst of grasping.

Nothing was getting finished, so I switched gears. I was already a religious reader of how-to-grow-on-Substack posts. Maybe it was time for me to go deeper.

What was I missing?

When I realized that successful people on Substack were often already famous (or "famous") or had come over with an existing list built up over several years, I felt both discouraged and validated. Wildly Successful Substackers, some at tens of thousands of subscribers, didn’t quite start from zero. They had existing platforms. And sure, some of them had just a few hundred when they started here, but considering that it took me over ten years to get to 480 subscribers with my last newsletter, and then starting over, it felt like they had a ten-year head start.

Basically, many were either already-influential people or serious writers, sometimes both. Journalists, reporters, former staff of prominent publications, MFA stock, professors, published authors. The kind of writer I’m not and never will be.

There were exceptions, but very few compared to the many who tried.

I came to terms with this: I was not exceptional. I was not even average. Compared to these people, I can barely even be considered a writer.

My logical brain said things like: it’s useless comparing yourself to other people. You have a lot of things those people don’t. You don’t have creative success but you’re making a good living. You’re not a real writer but you write. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that even better? Other people would kill to be you. You would’ve, five years ago.

Again, don’t feel bad for me. Growing up, becoming a writer wasn’t even a possibility. I thought you had to write a bestselling novel to make a good living and after 10 year old me read about the (un)likelihood of that happening, I discarded “writer” from my list of dream careers. But I was always writing, and after I graduated, I found it first a suitable side gig, and then somehow in the last couple of years, it became my main occupation. I feel very lucky.

Someone had once asked me how I maintain the balance between doing creative work and making money. The short answer is copywriting. The majority of my income comes from writing for brands. The longer answer is: find whatever you’re most efficient at that you also enjoy doing, learn how to get even faster and better at it, and work with clients who are already making money and value your work. Then spend the rest of your time and energy making art until that makes enough money so that you can do less of the first thing. But you can only make money making art if your art has an audience who wants to support it.

And we circle back to this newsletter.

I had once been proud that I was making money as a writer. But now I felt like I was missing something. I first thought I was missing a strategic or tactical secret, but now it felt like I was missing something.

I overshot and had overestimated my value or abilities. Having written on the internet for 15 years, I was beginning to suspect I was over the hill. Now it was a different playing field full of serious writers.

But many people have “made it” through grit and passion. That’s the stuff entrepreneurs are made of.

Can I lean on perseverance?

I’m not sure.

Passion, maybe?

I don’t know. “Follow your passion” feels so much like advice best suited for children, graduation speeches, and rich people.

I suspected the worst: I just don’t have enough willpower and passion.

I desperately wanted to trust the process, not necessarily that the process will lead somewhere with fireworks and a badge, but (keeping expectations low) simply that it will be worth it. I don’t mean to make this feel all transactional, just that knowing we all have limited time, whatever time I spend here is a trade for something alternate universe me is spending doing something else. Everything’s a trade.

Is it worth it? Instagram wasn’t worth it to me so I stopped spending my time there; I got time and sanity back to watch TV, read 100 books a year, and write more poetry.

And, I think we trade more things than time.

I may not be exceptional but I am efficient. I may not be passionate, my enthusiasms malleable, but I’m curious. I don’t have the tenacity of a reporter, but I’m good at selling ideas. I don’t have a lot of grit but I keep coming back. In my second decade of work and grown-up life, reaching any major creative Goal, like the humble first 1000 subscribers, has always evaded me, but have I not already succeeded in getting to spend my days doing things I enjoy?

I may not be a serious writer, but I have no rules to abide to. I can do anything I want like turn poetry recommendations into a glossy magazine quiz, write short poems inspired by Margot Robbie’s Barbie press tour outfits, and curate poetry collections that remind me of films and perfumes. I can do the things they can’t. Just kidding—they can do anything too. (See beauty reporter Jessica Defino’s found poems over at The Unpublishable.) You, too.

The only thing guaranteed to be worth anything, once we strip away our invented measures of worth, is a good time. A series of good times strung up over time is a good life. A good life is all there is until it’s over, and that’s called death.

We work with what we’ve got, to do what we can.

I am not a seriously exceptional writer, but I’ve always been more exceptionally attuned than the average person to two things: packaging and style. I’ve always felt compelled to follow the spark and friction of a swathe of things that usually aren’t considered serious or important: fashion, coming of age, glitter, reality television, pop music, etc. And now poetry. How things are packaged and presented, materially and otherwise, has been the key to my self-education and self-assertion. There are people I look up to who roughly do the same thing, and better, but I am better than the vast majority of people, and that’s enough.

So I write about those things.

I’m also exceptionally in tune with why I write. Writers tell stories, break news, communicate ideas—their specialties defined mostly by the type of writing they do. I do a tiny bit of all that (some just barely, some a bit more), but mostly I think what I do best is this:

I use fluff, feelings, and “flowery” language, often with a soft focus, to cut to the point.

This is how I write because I am sick of the opposite: direct and boring language that is optimized and ultimately pointless.

I have a preference for short things because a) (see above) apparently I have little willpower, and b) it’s important to me that people, not just people who identify themselves as readers, can participate if they want to. It’s a great feeling when someone who reads appreciates my writing; it’s even better when someone who doesn’t read does.

But I don't think in words. Contrary to my profession, I tend to see the world in tangible, visual, contextual things. To me, a great book with a great cover is better than a great book with a mediocre cover. A great script with great cinematography, costuming, and music is just better. I think a lot about packaging and experience and immersion and how to make it pretty, how to make it sound good. Am I less of a writer for that, or more of something else?

I write copy and poems and am trying my hand at a murder mystery game.

I will likely never write a novel, award-winning or bestselling, or break an important story. I may never get around to submitting anything to a literary publication which means I may never have another third-party approved byline to say “this person is a writer”. Aside from a couple poems I wrote as a kid, I got my first byline on the front page of Huffington Post when I was 22 not because I was a good writer, but because the game of attention had started and I was then an up and coming young fashion writer (read: blogger who writes) in a country where you probably needn’t be too impressed that I was among the pick of the litter.

I may never make any sustainable kind of money writing here.

Whatever success I may or may not find with Substack doesn’t really impact my quality of life, other than create self-inflicted wounds of comparison. Due to the auspicious fact that I’m a human and not a robot, I always forget that, and then get disappointed. But it’s true. Sure, it’d be great to make money writing exactly what I want to be writing about. But it’s certainly not the only way. It is a privilege that I get to write and be creative. I know I already make more money than many of the Serious Writers I’ve compared myself to; a well-known writer who has authored many books and whom I admire deeply recently wrote about not having any savings after working for more than a decade. But, they also don’t pay for housing. Trades.

If this doesn’t work as a sustainable and worthwhile trade for my time, something else might. I am always free to go elsewhere.

That longing to be validated financially (from one of my life mottos: you are what you buy) might not be fulfilled here. What I do know is that what makes up most of our lives is the doing. The art is in the doing.

It’s certainly not easy to be all c’est la vie about it when “real life” intervenes; mortgage, interest rates, wisdom teeth, dental insurance, white hairs, global crisis, the grief and joys of being a DINK, the endless grief of everything; signs of the apocalypse turn into bingeable entertainment; I’m still making mood boards and poetry.

I think about time closing in on me, as it often feels like it’s doing. But if I were to suddenly die one day and not get to do everything on my list, will my dead body really care? Only the living remember the dead. Is there a tally in the after-life?

What if all the consistency in the world gets you absolutely nowhere? Are you okay with that? What if you die sooner than you thought? It doesn’t even have to be you, and it doesn’t have to be as final as death.

What if things just change?

Success is a man-made machine. The illusion of productivity is its engine.

I’ve had some successes and many failures. But in every failure, there is always a bright side, a dark side, and everything at the juicy center, too.

I recently read Stoned by author, historian, and jewelry designer Aja Raden, then watched the documentary/thriller(lol) she appears in called Nothing Lasts Forever. It’s 100%-Tomatometer good. Diamonds are not forever, just a very successful advertising and product placement campaign created because De Beers was faced with an excess supply of diamonds. The origin of Thanksgiving is more like a game of omission telephone than truth, not exactly a friendly feast to thank the Indigenous people for help with the first American harvest. Who can blame them? Colonists brought over diseases that wiped out entire populations, kidnapped and enslaved the natives to force-teach them how to grow crops, and also smelled really bad because they didn’t believe in bathing. Basically acted like the worst guests ever in a forced home invasion situation—then packaged it and marketed it to do what? Give thanks and sell turkeys. In the Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan dedicates a chapter to the apple and its invented narrative as a wholesome Protestant fruit suitable for the new world. But it really took off because apples could be made into alcohol, and that’s anything anyone ever really drank. Then when more beverage options became safe and available, therefore threatening the apple economy, apple growers got clever in the 1800s with “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Maybe it does, but so do so many other fruits. Apples got the extra-special PR treatment.

Pick a tradition, any tradition, there’s a story behind it probably driven by economics and greed, survival of the fittest. I just picked the first three I could remember from things I just watched, read, and listened to. We sold ourselves our entire lives.

I sold myself the illusion that my validation was contingent on a number, because hey everything’s about data now, right? Validation was not the point. A number is a metric, but a metric can also be an illusion. I am not a product. I am not in the business of growth.

If I could choose a theme of my various vocations and occupations, the business I am in, maybe it’s expansion. I used to think it was wonder but wonder is sort of static, a still moment frozen in idyllic state. Expansion is dynamic, changing, moving not up and to the right but always following some sort of invisible current.

One thing that has been consistent over the past little while: I kept reading poetry. I didn’t, in the beginning. It’s hard to do much when you’re feeling stuck. But slowly, it started to happen. On the day I wrote the first lines of this on my iPad in the dark, I had coincidentally (or not) finished reading a poetry collection so good, something kinetic started to bubble in me. I finally managed to write this, faster than any other draft. And then I managed to (if you’re reading this) edit and finish it, because I could see the truth start to reveal itself as I cut lines, added details, filled in the blanks.

Poetry continues to exist because as much as it gets shoved into a box based on the expectations and rigour of a select few, it has always reinvented itself, for subjective better or worse, to do what it does best: move people.

I am not writing this because: I’ve figured it out! (nope). I hacked a productivity secret (nope). I had a psychic inkling that it would work (nope). Willpower or passion (nope, nope).

I am still kind of stuck, still toggling between everything that makes me human, still indecisive as ever, still with a tendency to try to hold on to things that are made to be squishy and soft and changing. But I am also still…here. 

The current of energy directed and shared, that’s what moves us in the direction of our wildest dreams, not the prospect of success nor the potential of the exceptional. The promise of exceptionality is a false premise, but it’s a powerful one. Everything is breaking around us including the illusion that we are the exception. But maybe average isn’t so bad. Maybe we can do a lot with average. When we can’t aim for the top, what do we aim for? To be free from the endless artifice of our own invisible boxes. To be moved. To get to the juicy center right now. To tell the truth. To make art, to read poetry, to pop the bubble of the illusion that life’s long enough for anything other than having the best time with what we’ve got.

If you’re feeling aimless and still, I’ll share what helped me, the TL;DR of this entire meandering thing: whichever way you’re moved is the way the current flows.

Turns out, I am in the business, I think, of moving people, including very importantly myself.