150 - 3️⃣ years
Hey there, !
Not too shabby if I say so myself - 3 years down and #150 is the milestone we’ve achieved. Still loving it, still writing - let’s see where we’re AT.
Quick stats
Last year I copy-pasted all my text into a Word Counter to do stats - this year I’m lazy so here’s what I have found based on the newsletter analytics of the provider I use:
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51 posts written
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13 new subscribers total (slow but steady growth!)
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As of August 2022, I have 83 subscribers which break down in the following way:
- Deloitte: 45
- Uni: 11
- School: 20
- Family: 3
- Boardgames: 3
- Untagged: 1
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~79k words written (thus an average of ~1.5k words per post) - an increase from last year by ~15% in terms of total words. I’m actually surprised by this - I wrote more?!
Post Highlights
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Highest open rates: 141 - Too Many Thoughts about Netflix at 55 out of 83 subscribers, for a whopping 66.3% open rate! This was closely followed by:
- 142 - This is my En-rant-o (62.7%);
- 135 - Tweet Roundup (62.2%); and
- 143 - What is love? (61.4%)
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Highest clicks of newsletter links: 135 - Tweet Roundup, which makes sense, because there were so many Twitter links to be clicked.
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Personal favourites:
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140 - Destroy the Wedding Circle - my first ever rant on a newsletter which I just LOVED writing. It was an absolute joy to channel the rage against Wedding Circles into this newsletter. I think I was really clear about what I wanted to write, which meant it came out pretty well!
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142 - This is my En-rant-o - the best in person engagement I got, I think, with my favourite comment from a friend “Did you just come up with the title and then go from there?” (note: I didn’t, it came afterwards :D). I’m not usually so rage-fueled with my writing, or nitpicky about films, but it was just so easy with this film!
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122 - The Tier List tier list - I loved writing this because it was such a stupid idea - a tier list of tier lists I had written. I’m all about stupid ideas and seeing them work - the fountain of creativity is a dirty pipe that needs to get all the shit ideas out of first, before you can get to the good stuff.
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Survey insights (8 people - literally double from last year!)
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Top things that people like:
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Life updates! - A great new addition that looks like it’s been a hit
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Personal stories - Just gotta keep this train chugging along :D
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Internet adventures - interesting! I gotta do more write-ups of random stuff I find on the internet - maybe more Tweet Roundups?
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Educational content - Fantastic, I have a few in the tank that will be coming out soon :)
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Things people don’t want:
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Brainstorming and Tier list posts - I’m going to reduce these to much less frequency until there’s a really outstanding idea to brainstorm or a useful tier list write about
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Less location recommendations - but I don’t think I really had many of these anyway
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Fascinatingly, highest interest post from the survey was 143 - What is love?, as well as anything with original content (e.g. the Kiva post!). More experimentation and learning to write into posts might be something new to do…
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Gadgets and Life Admin came up as surprising few things that people want to see as recommendations - I don’t usually have these but…cool to note! With the renovations coming in soon, I’m sure I’m going to be doing a bunch of research into a whooooole lot of things, so I can provide some recs on that front.
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I had some recommendations back which I’ll look into!
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One specifically was a book called House of Leaves which I’ve heard about but I’m looking forward to trying to find…
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The other was embedding more multimedia into these posts - message received and will try to do this! Email clients can be a bit crap about these things though - I think I tried before, but I will try again when it’s relevant!
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Goals
Last year, I set some goals. Here’s thoughts on whether I achieved them or not!:
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Shorter, more edited posts: I think I have both been successful and not successful with this. I was surprised seeing that I had increased my output word-wise by 16%, but also that there have been a number of posts (like the Tweet Roundup or Tier lists) that are shorter and smaller. In terms of editing, I think I had done it better during the first half of the last year, but I’ve settled back into my own rants in the latter half of the year. Maybe I’ll have to revisit the brevity of my posts.
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Less essays, more day-to-day: I really don’t know - I’ve definitely provided more life updates in the last year than I had done in the previous 2 years, but I still wrote a bunch of essay-length articles. I think I kept a good balance - thinking very specifically about the things I wanted to write a LOT about versus settling on easier content types (like lists and roundups).
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Improved prose: Kind of, but probably not. I think instead, I’ve grown into the style of conversational prose that I’m happy with. I tried to write a bit more flowery in a few pieces (like Fig. 1 or What is love?) but it’s not really me. I like how I write, and the recent longer pieces have helped me see that the weekly practice of writing has solidified my style.
So, for the next year ahead:
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More personal posts!: I enjoy these life updates (like last week) and I think it helps me reflect on things. I might do them monthly rather than every 10 posts, and give a bit more of the ‘personal’ part of this newsletter since that’s what people want to see more of.
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Playing with form: I haven’t done it enough, and it’s probably the next stage of the journey for what I’m doing with this newsletter. I don’t know what this will look like yet but I’m going to try mix it up - multimedia was a good shout, but also try and push what an email newsletter can do.
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More OC: This one I’m still thinking about, but the Kiva post made me realise that I should probably do more experiments that I tell you all about (or not tell you) and then report back on what I found. Part of my mantra to do more things means that I should do, and then document.
This is already a long post, so just to finish - thank you, thank you, thank you for continuing to read this newsletter, whether you’ve been reading for 3 years or 3 weeks - though I might not show it when people mention it, I secretly treasure every time someone brings up something I’ve written about.
Though I write this for myself, to document my life and thoughts in an online form that isn’t social media, it’s nice to know it’s not being sent out to the void <3
Chat soon :)
Let me know if you have any feedback for the newsletter!
✔️Real Life Recommendations
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The Gentlemen - a Guy Ritchie instant classic tbh. If you’ve watched Lock, Stock and Smoking Barrels this is the updated 2019 version with more suave style, a plot that makes more sense, and a fantastic performance from Hugh Grant. Interweaving plot lines and fun characters make this a really cool romp! Highly recommended - I found this on Netflix :)
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Beijing Impressions - very specific recommendation for Peking Duck in Box Hill; it’s not new, but I hadn’t been until very recently. It reminds me of the Old Beijing place I told y’all about at QV in the city, but it has a different twist on Peking Duck. The thing I’m liking about this new trend is they’re cutting a CRAP ton of duck for you, which means even after you’re done with the pancakes you don’t feel jibbed that you weren’t able to eat the rest of the duck. Recommended - I think Old Beijing has it beat just slightly, but it’s more convenient (for me anyway).
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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Listerine Royalties - a uniquely enduring asset - An interesting historical asset that’s still paying today. The wording of a license given for Listerine allowed for royalties to be paid ‘in the future’, and a judge ruled that this meant royalties would be paid forever. This meant that being able to buy a slice of these royalties is worth a lot! Exactly how much? Well…that’s what this analysis is for :)
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How Websites Die - a poignant reflection on what it means for websites and digital content to…well, be ethereal. Potentially be dropped due to hosting providers going away, or servers being turned off…how do we ensure things persist, especially digitally?
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How TikTok triggered a books revolution - add to ‘Things that TikTok has triggered a revolution for’ - literally, everything.