notes app; 10 subscriber special??!?
on an incredible milestone, the joy of learning and the balance of fact and truth
Ni hao.
Sav here.
It’s been a long, tiresome week — and I mean it this time.
Not sarcastically like in last post where I had multiple public holidays in quick succession, but really so, because I had done a ton of chasing my own tail this week.
I point at a few minor issues acclimating together, namely:
Work is feeling a bit purposeless.
A change to colder weather which I physically enjoy but mentally struggle with.
I have a blocked nose, which is more destructive than you think.
This has symptomised into a number of known outcomes:
Very little page movement in the book I’m reading.
Sitting down this last Wednesday and staring at a blinking cursor for about fifteen minutes straight.
Clicking a podcast episode titled ‘how to regain your spark’ by Psychology of Your 20s, which is an excellent podcast by the way, but is something I seem to had unconsciously sought after.
To top off the conundrum of coincidences, in the process of procrastinating this, I happened to hit What I’ve Learned After Three Years on Substack by Rob Henderson fully expecting a typical tough love + hustle bro article on how to optimise your Substack for growth.
Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find a curated advice column from a number of great, well-known authors of past, present and developing with the underlying statement that to become a better writer — one must live.
(It does go into the more growth-oriented advice afterwards but I admittingly only skimmed the start of it when I opened it.)
It’s almost as if the universe is conspiring in my favour.
(A quote that I highlighted from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, the book I’m currently reading.)
Bit by bit, I see signs that synchronicity is real. Those manifestation girlies, as prophecy-fulfilling, horoscopic, tarot-reading, bias-anchoring as they can be — were perhaps right. It’s a bit like gaslighting but in the positive the direction and you know what, if it helps me, we ball.
I’ve had a look at my stars (which apparently have a meteor shower happening soon?) — here’s what we’ve got on tonight.
I checked my stars - here’s what we’ve got tonight.
10 subscriber special!
Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to announce a massive milestone for the Journaling in Public newsletter — we have reached ten subscribers!
(Funnily enough, I’m writing this from a cafe literally called Ladies & Gentlemen Cafe. That’s another bout of synchronicity for you. Insane.)
Ten! One-zero! Two digits! Literally 10x of what I had started with in January this year where I had put my own email for testing purposes.
Other than myself, there are three people I know in real life (at least that I’m aware of) and six internet strangers turned internet acquaintances. An absolute pleasure to have you here and here’s to our continued, consistent, word-based relationship 🎉
I have no 10-subscriber special planned. Maybe an audio/podcast style post? Yeah, that’ll do. I think. Keep me accountable.
A teensy budgeting challenge
Cost of living bites hard, especially so in Sydney — or at least, that’s what every single news channel tries to push. It’s either that or the housing market. Those two are by-far the hottest topics in any news read or political campaign.
Over the next fortnight, my partner and I will be doing a self-imposed budget challenge where we will cut food spending to a minimum — which by far makes the largest brunt of our costs. It’s a quirky little challenge not because we HAVE to, and I acknowledge the sore privilege of not needing to, but because we want to challenge whether our spending is as justified as we pretend it is.
I will not disclose the number right now but in the notes app 2-3 weeks from now, you may or may not see whether we had been successful.
The joy of pursuit
For whatever reason, I had recently thought about how cool of a place university was if you ignored the fact that they had become human factory lines to produce patient, obedient workers. You could probably carry this sentiment towards the modern education system which, I’d like to note, is not particularly bad and is more a function of the society we’ve developed for ourselves.
It made me think about that one dude who accrued $737k in student loans, who is either dead-but-not-reported or a bloke with exorbitantly loaded parents and fuckin’ loves studying.
If I was this imaginary dude, with no requirement for money and having everything served to me on a silver platter — what would I want to study? I’m starting up a little list on my phone for that (which makes me think I should write lists for more things too) and here’s what I’ve got so far:
Economics (especially game theory)
Day Trading (not to be confused with investing)
Anthropology (in particular, how cultures and traditions came to be and how people immigrated/emigrated everywhere)
Etymology (like where words and names come from)
Blacksmithing (sword-making, in particular)
Game design (using tools like Unity, GameMakerStudio, Unreal, etc.)
Marketing (online marketing in particular, which I think is increasingly necessary knowledge in this day and age)
There are the facts and there is the truth
On the topic of synchronicity, I’ve been coping it from TV shows and movies recently.
I talked briefly last post about how I suddenly quested my career trajectory while watching The Divorce Insurance. I then experienced something else while watching The Life List, a new romance/literary fiction on Netflix starring Sofia Carson rediscover herself through the help of her late mother.
!!! SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE LIFE LIST - END OF SPOILERS AVAILABLE BELOW !!!In a scene where Sofia Carson’s character meets her long-lost biological father at a dingy Vermont sports bar, he says:
“There are facts and there is the truth. You have to be okay with making room for both.”
It’s a statement that mirrors an idea I talked about so, so long ago in one of my more ambitious early posts: love cannot make up for being misunderstood. There, I phrased this as feelings are more important than fact.
The characters geek about the wisdom in his words and I couldn’t help but do the same. There is a lot of maturity that comes with challenging limiting and conflicting beliefs in your own head, but even more self-forgiveness to acknowledge that you are not wrong for thinking that way.
As an unfortunately more negative side note, I had found some of myself reflected in Garret (played by Sebastian de Souza), the secondary love interest who is decidedly incompatible with the main character. His actions were justified to him but not to the main character and certainly not the audience and it made me question whether I’m operating like that too.
I’m reminded once again of a lyric that I couldn’t but higlight from NIKI’s Blue Mountain, which interestingly enough, I noted before at another time when I wasn’t feeling so tip-top about myself and my ability to care and provide:
It took being written out the novel to finally see
That you care more about
Being good than being good to me
And yes, the difference may be subtle
But it would have saved us, baby
!!! END OF SPOILERS !!!Hey man, it’s been a long week.
But don’t worry about me, I’m getting there — and this Taiwanese chicken sandwich is helping me do so :)
Substacks that have fueled my tank this last week:
9 projects i’m working on that make me forget I own a phone by
🎁What I’ve Learned After Three Years on Substack by
🪴The Ideation to Execution Gap by
🌉what men don’t understand about women by
🎭on madness by
(why is the actor from umbrella academy on my substack feed??) 🦑