Hey there, !

Yup, it's number 300.

300 posts on an email newsletter that's now 6 years old, has 112 subscribers (!) and an average open rate of about 70-75%.

In my wildest dreams, I thought I'd be at LEAST at 300 subscribers by now (hehe) but I suck at marketing, and I don't have that many friends, so once we cross Dunbar's number then I'll know I've #madeit.

I usually go into a deep dive on the analytics and feedback on the survey, but I'm lazy and it doesn't matter that much. Instead, some highlights:

• I get a bump in readership every year because of the Chinese Zodiac post, and it's the first post in my 6 years of writing that crossed 100 in terms of unique users reading the post (not including forwards because I don't know how to track that). I started having to pay because the anticipatory readership was going to stop it from being sent out through my provider!!

• Looks like there was some good readership for life updates, but also more specifically on You can get a passport in a day and money is weird sometimes - the former being an absolute RIOT to both experience and write about, and the latter being a rant about people and money, my favourite subject.

• My personal favourites from the last year were can you pick the poem?, dabbling and the life of the (mario) party. Gosh I spent so much time on that Mario Party one making images because I was trying to do a WaitButWhy / MoreToThat type article, and I think it...kind of worked? I'm not good at graphics - I'll try to get better at it hahahaha.

• The story idea was fun, but on reflection I don't think I'll do it again. Some feedback I had was that it was too hard to remember things from previous chapters, which is true, because I ALSO forgot, myself, and constantly had to go back and read to catch myself up. Still, fun times.

• I don't think I've repeated a Real Life Recommendation yet, which is EXCELLENT because that's exactly what its for - to try and push myself to do new things every week. It's getting harder for some reason - maybe because I don't do THAT many new things every week, but I'm gonna try and dive into more detail with why I like recommendations instead of a constant flood of them. Stay tuned I guess.

Every year I say there'll be more changes and that I think I'll do something different with how I post and what I post and what I do, but tbh we'll be here next year same time same energy, one post a week, some graphical, some personal, some ranty, some educational - things don't change as much as we think they do.

Then again, things change a lot more than we think they do, too.

Well, I don't know what the future will bring but I can at least say that I don't plan to do anything major to the newsletter for the forseeable future.

As always, I super appreciate you being here to read whatever the hell I write about. I remind myself constantly that no-one ever has to read this stuff I write, that I'm lucky to have my friends care about what I'm writing, and that there's a little corner of the internet with my name on it that just...thrives.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Chat soon :)