250 - 5️⃣ years
Time flies, , doesn't it?
I know I said I would go through and do the analytics and stuff, but I'm kind of lazy this year and the insights are pretty similar from last year; I'll just give some overall highlights, with reference to 200 - 4️⃣ years:
Content:
- Top posts were reviewing 30, Year of the Dragon and the meat, the mind and the media. I don't think this is too surprising; the Lunar New Year post is my favourite to do every year and is usually the most popular because who doesn't want to know how their year is going to go?! The reviewing 30 post is probably something that is a bit more unique, and the meat/mind/media was just a great title (I think?).
- My subscribers have creeped up a bit (from about 82 last year, to 90 active subscribers), and fortunately I am staying pretty constant at around 60-70% open rate for each post which is pretty nice! Looks like y'all are at least opening up the email to scan for interesting things ^^
- I noticed that y'all give me a bump in reads when I have a 'life update' post, which happens every 5 posts. The personal angle is a bit more interesting, I grant you, and the storytelling from a personal POV is often more fluid to write.
- The last year of posts have been very travel heavy - I think about 20% of them had to do with travel of some variety, since I'd been to Thailand, Europe, Taiwan, and Japan...and then Europe again recently. I think this has been a bit of a response to some stressful times at work, but also trying to live a bit more.
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My own favourites this year - in no particular order:
- 241 - a letter to 32 - first in a series that I hope will become annual - a letter to my future self. This, as well as the predictions post, are a way that I'm trying to speak more truth and agency into what I do in my life into the world.
- 202 - How to Get Good - a bit more academic in style, but a culmination of more of an 'advice'-type newsletter which I've been less inclined to do in the past; this one did get a good reception though!
- 216 - Vince's Fried Chicken Tier List - International edition - fried chicken is always good - I may need to re-update this after my recent trip.
- 221 - poems I read recently - I've just loved getting into poetry. It was never something I was good at understanding, and I still have a long way to go - I just love that there's so many ways of self-expression which are so beautiful.
- 243 - you bring it where you go - I think I got the most response to this email because it was a bit more mental health-y (like my previous post 175 - A detour into mental health which also garnered a lot of attention). I hope they've been helpful :)
Goals:
Let's evaluate goals from last year, shall we?:
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New schedule [PARTIAL SUCCESS]: Last year I thought that I might develop a new schedule and stop posting when I didn't feel like it, or post at different times of the week...I have kind of done this more recently, but with the freedom that this gave me, I ended up not doing that at all, because I really liked being on time every week for a post.
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More projects, more AI, more interesting things [PARTIAL SUCCESS]: More projects, no, more AI, kind of, more interesting things, hopefully? chatGPT has been helpful but at the end of the day you're here to read my words, artisinally hand-crafted and smithed in the forge of my mind.
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Something new [STILL IN PROGRESS]: I'd rather say this is still in progress rather than abandoned because I'm still looking for something new to do. I think there's still some more format things I can do through the newsletter, but we'll see how it goes.
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Better marketing [ABANDONED]: I'm abandoning this one - I don't care about posting on social media, and I don't need to make this way bigger, at least until I get to 100 subscribers and have to start paying for the account :D
For the coming year, I think I want to focus on what I'm looking at right in front of me; I don't need to start big projects or start a podcast or anything, I just want to continue doing what I'm doing here, and ensure it's as consistent as possible. So most of the things below are upgrades rather than net new things:
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Better editing, more "timelessness": About a third of the content I come up with is probably more transient / rant-y / superficial level, which is super fun, but I do want to see if I can continue to refine my writing, do more editing, make things that are more timeless rather than something to consume and throw out. Like...instead of fast food, or fast fashion versions of writing, I want to be able to improve my writing to get to a place that is more beautiful. If this means I miss a week here or there to edit, to put the right amount of time to things then I'll do that. However, what that means is that I might be writing longer posts, which means...
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More graphical content: gifs, photos, visuals - I'll try to put more of these in. I stopped putting too many of these in because it takes the longest time in terms of writing the post - the searching, uploading and coding into the post - but if I take a bit more time with each post, maybe that'll be better :)
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Keeping the fun: this is a project that I do mainly for myself, but I know y'all are reading it as well so there may be certain expectations. However, I don't want to get to a point where I'm forcing myself to write this - I want to write because I like to write and it brings me a lot of joy. And part of that is doing this with a spirit of fun (rants, and tier lists, and food things).
Last thoughts
As always, thank you a million times over that you read this li'l newsletter - especially for those who have been around here for a while. It's a bit selfish, I feel, to ask you to subscribe to this email newsletter and let me into your inboxes to share my thoughts about things, somewhat unwarranted since you don't know what will be there, but I'm happy that you've let me do this!
I'm still having a wonderful time with the newsletter. I want to keep writing and writing and writing and thinking and thinking and thinking, whatever that looks like. This year will be a bit more challenging, as I'm going through a bit of a change in my life (I've quit Deloitte and I'm moving to a new job!) which I'll deconstruct sometime soon, I'm sure. I'm leaving behind the constant project -> travel -> project -> travel vibe, and settling a bit more into the life I've got in Melbourne, whatever that looks like. I'm wanting to be more agentic - taking more charge of my life and consciously constructing what I want my future to be - and I think that'll have to be interesting :)
Thank you for being on this journey with me <3
Chat soon :)