decision making is hard even when you've made the decision a year before and just didn't remember
aka i'm back on substack and i'm ready to start this back up consistently (hold me to it)
patchworks is a container for my writing experiments
i’ve sat down to write this substack newsletter, natively on the site, and i am suddenly stuck.
these past few weeks have felt like i’ve progressed in my confidence with writing- that the grasping, the reaching out, was fruitful. i’ve finally latched onto something… only to be hit by a brick wall of paralysis as soon as i sit with a purpose of sharing. where are the words? is there anything meaningful in my mind to share with an audience?
i move to obsidian and decide i am going to type, keep typing, won’t stop typing and maybe i’ll decipher what wishes to be said coherently enough to transmit it to others.
me being dragged to and fro by my wims and inability to make choices hahaaha
a brief history of why i’m here, sharing this with you
when i started posting on youtube in october of 2023, i had just started journaling creatively again, so i started the channel because i was hyper-fixating and wanted to be involved in the community, share what i was learning, creating & being inspired by. i had vague ideas of a potential stationery shop, an eventual patreon membership, and a desire to share more of my thoughts and ideas with people outside of my best friend and sister. i didn’t know what the best way to approach those things was or if i would even be succesful but i knew i wanted to try and that imperfect action is always better than inaction because you will inevitably change, grow, and learn by doing.
in december of 2023, i took Cody Cook-Parrott’s “Writing the Personal” class, which was focused on personal essay writing and, consequently, launched the “patchwork life” newsletter in january of 2024. was i unsure of how it tied into what i was already creating on youtube? absolutely. but it was another means to communicate and reach people, utilizing a form i had always gravitated to (writing). i started before i was ready (once again) and was met with friction. this method of doing things is valuable and important but it isn’t easy. there is resistance and the anxieties of learning as you go. but that friction is what creates the spark of momentum so its worth whatever uncomfortable moments it generates.
in march of 2024, i opened my patreon with an idea and a plan but not 100% certainty that it was the right course of action (sensing a pattern?).
the intersection between patreon and substack has always been the most difficult for me to manage but i thought that the issue related to the shapes it inhabited more so than to any insecurities towards my abilities to write and share that writing. however, these past few weeks have revealed that part of the problem is the fear to share my words with others and my fear is a hydra with quite a few heads:
i am afraid i don’t have anything unique to say: no original thoughts, nothing of substance and that i’m just spewing the same thing everyone else is (which is both boring and valueless)
i’m afraid that how i choose to share my words and the platform i choose to share them in is the wrong choice and that it will continue to be the wrong choice because of how fickle i can be
and i’m afraid to lose the audience i’ve been in community with for the past two years if i decide to pivot or expand.
obsidian’s part in all of this
i’ve been back in my obsidian vault and enjoying it thoroughly. i particpated in ’s Notemaking Mastery sprint in May and can say that those two things started the mini-journey that’s led to this letter being in your inbox.
i want to share with you, maybe even record a video, on how I've started to overcome my limiting beliefs surrounding voicing my own ideas and opinions, thanks to my Zettlekasten (obsidian, commonplace, second brain? whatever you want to call it) but that’s for another email.
I’ve even managed to pivot a bit and include obsidian videos on youtube as part of my core video lineup. It was scary to start making different content than what I have been making the past two years, both because I was scared of losing the community I had built and also because it’s new to me too. But I’ve received such lovely feedback from some of those people in the analog journaling community who have both enjoyed and been inspired by the obsidian videos.
Sometimes, things are scary, and sometimes we can make wrong choices, but we won’t know until we try, right? and if it was the wrong choice, we’ll find out and be able to make an informed decision the next time. that’s why it’s so important to avoid the paralysis, the stagnancy, that comes with indecision.
So we’ve reached an important choice: what will live on Patreon and what will live on Substack?
Like I mentioned, at first, the idea was to share some of my writing on patreon and some of it on substack but it made the waters too muddy and ultimately made it harder for me to share my words with you. Moving forward, all my creative writing will be sent to you via substack (note: i also publish my writing on my website, which wont be changing) and patreon will continue to be a place where i share mostly visual and audio content along with my digital printables.
In the past few months, i had been sharing a monthly-ish newsletter on patreon that focused on a topic to discuss what my life had been like lately. i am going to be moving that to substack and sharing that here along with my ideas, my long-form writing, and my personal essays. but i don’t want to limit it to just that. i could also share what notes i created in my obsidian recently (what topics and ideas i’ve been drawn to), what i’ve been reading or watching, and things of that nature. i had considered changing the name of my newsletter but i think “patchwork life” still describes it quite well.
what i find funny about this decision is that i seemed to have already made it back in july of 2024 (almost exactly a year ago) and i wrote about it! and sent it to you! 🫣
i must have lost the plot along the way because i didn’t remember. i even started this letter similarly to how i started the one from 2024. it’s funny how the mind works but i think it also makes sense. even though i had seemingly made this exact decision a year ago, i hadn’t realized what my fears were surrounding my writing and so i hid behind the fear of platform (a real one, but not the primary force).
seeing that i made this decsion a year ago cements that it’s the right one, that i’m maybe not as fickle as i think i am (perhaps, just more forgetful). i’m finding my voice, finding that i do have unique ideas to share with you, that i just need to write more and share more. through the continous action of publishing my words for the public, it’ll become easier to sit in that vulnerability and to expand on my skills.
i am grateful for those of you who have been on this journey for me and i apologize for the slight repetitive nature of this letter. i wasn’t even sure what i was going to write about when i first started but it feels right for it to be this.
until next time,
p.s if you’re interested in how life has looked like for me since my last letter to you, check out those life lately newsletters i sent out in my patreon. free members get access to them.
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