Postcard 049 - Writing
The full title of this post is "what writing actually looks like."
Over the past 24 hours, I've had a few friends send me this article about the tyranny of personal brand and the need for everyone (seriously, everyone) to perform working in public (i.e. shouting on the Internet).
(As an aside, there's no irony lost on me that I am, in fact, writing about this article in a newsletter where I send postcards about my life.)
The article accurately captures my mixed feelings on the game that most of us are playing, or at least the arena that many of us have to spend time in. As someone who makes a living from consulting, teaching, and speaking, I would love to believe that word of mouth referrals will power my business forever. Thankfully, I am not that naive.
I know that I have to post/share/be present in people's feeds with that fine balance of "here is a thing I'm proud of" without the "look at me" main character energy that makes us cringe. But I don't have to be present all the time and I don't have to be in everyone's feeds.
I've been thinking a lot about posting and presence lately because the last six months or so have been consumed by writing.
In terms of time spent, I am certainly a "writer." My main output, professionally, is words. Between writing my new Reforge course, the primer on quantitative product discovery with Adam Fishman, and my Year 03.5 review, I've published over 40,000 words in the last 6 months. This doesn't include the handful of talks that I've given, the responses that I've written for people in my Reforge course, or even this newsletter (which, I'll grant, has shown up infrequently).
But across that time period, what writing actually looks like is not sexy. It's not aesthetic. It's me either in my office, at my kitchen table, going for a walk to think, or sitting on my couch and staring outside (as pictured above).
In his book Unf*ck Yourself, Gary John Bishop says "You have the life you’re willing to put up with." He pushes the reader to think about what is it that they are willing to do and unwilling to compromise on.
Right now, I'm unwilling to trade time spent writing for time spent making my writing look consumable for others. Perhaps that's a privileged perspective and perhaps that will change down the road. Maybe I'm stubborn and unwilling to play the game.
But — at least for now — I know what writing looks like for me.