why can't it be both?
is leisure and business really so mutually exclusive to one another?
Journaling in Public is a newsletter sharing stories on career, relationships, mindset, and all the joys and mishaps of navigating our 20s. If that appeals to you, feel free to subscribe to the void that is my mailing list:
Our phones are constantly listening to us.
This is no secret.
It’s about as true of a fact as water being wet, fork being found in kitchen, and the Pope being… you know, Catholic.
I’ve experienced this most notably when a mate verbally talk about nostalgia towards the Nintendo Wii somewhere in 2023 and instantly everyone who heard that comment getting eBay ads for refurbished Wii Remotes.
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg knows what you ate for breakfast, where you’re travelling next year, and who your daughter’s first love will be before you even think about marriage.
That being said, I was a little surprised to see Substack1 hit me with a moment of algorithmic synchronicity when it presented xanthe appleyard’s note of how she turned her recent long-form Substack post around the owned-media movement into a TikTok / Instagram Reel / YouTube short format.
Full disclosure, I wasn’t too interested in reading another post that criticised social media and how it was the scum of the earth — there’s an abundance of circlejerk denunciations on this orange bookmark platform we share — I just wanted to know what kind of content Xanthe was working with to create this great video that was more than plenty to convert me into reading.
Luckily for me, Xanthe’s post was not hurr durr internet bad and instead a genuinely remarkable and soft-hearted analysis on why the algorithm is not the villain we make it out to be (more like an endearing sidekick to the antagonist like Kronk from The Emperor’s New Groove or Pain & Panic from Hercules) alongside a showing of her own wonderful and streamlined content system and strategy.
Hey @Zuck — get the fuck out of my head.
Printed at the bottom of my iPhone notes app, following the little strategy and life review I had for myself a few Fridays ago, I wrote:
“Why can’t it be both?”
By that, I mean: Why can’t I talk about literature and poetry and bleed words on a page while also speaking money and career and LinkedIn speak? Why can’t I share light-hearted yet comprehensive whinges about behaviour at a buffet while also exploring serious and controversial and politically driven topics? Why can’t I speak openly about darknesses I’ve been facing, the burnout and self-doubt that brews into a sizzling turmoil — and at the next instance, chat about my entirely uninformed and solely vibes-based perspective of luxury fashion brands — and last but not least, go into great detail regarding risk culture and constructive communication in the workplace?
Why can’t writing for me be both a leisure hobby and side hustle?
Are they really so mutually exclusive to one another?
Now, there are many reasons as to why it would be difficult to do (see: never having enough time, the mountain which is life admin, our little bitch of a friend called burnout) but none of them, really speaking, are reasons why it’s impossible.
You can do everything you want in your lifetime — just not always as at the same time, and that’s what strategy and time management and prioritisation is for. You’ve got, if all goes well, about 80+ years of existence to sort our your dreams; and unless your dream is conquering a neighbouring galaxy, that’s a healthy amount of time to get there.
Friends of the newsletter will know that I’ve started a TikTok page recently.
It’s not Journaling in Public branded because the primary intention of the account is a lifestyle one where I can offload the half-a-billion food pictures I’ve collected throughout my time in Sydney. Though, of course, the secondary intention of it all is just as Xanthe mentions, a top-of-the-funnel acquisition approach to move audiences within the short-form space into the medium/long-form space which I find more impactful and me.
Every piece of advice about social media growth talks about adapting and cross-posting content from one platform to another as an easy and effective way to get more shots on goal per ounce of effort. This makes total sense. However, the full disclosure of the matter is that I’ve run perhaps run on the limiting belief that what I write about here is not cohesive and does not follow a true niche and does not translate well into a visual format and that I have very fiercely told myself throughout the year that I do not view Journaling in Public as a marketing engine or entrepreneurial pursuit and that adding a monetary aspect to my fun project while erase all enjoyment that comes with it and leave me victim to capitalistic hustle bro messaging once again.
The above, I call limiting beliefs, because:
Incohesive and random content does have a niche, you fool - it’s called lifestyle content. It makes up more than half of all short-form videos.
Running away from grading is also called fear of failure or fear of being perceived, something that the in public of Journaling in Public is actively against.
Does not scream perfectionism, but is instead an attestation of: I will not try because I’m a bitch ass coward who can’t handle accountability.
Once again, that’s where the million-dollar sentence comes in.
I say a million-dollar sentence because there are, very much, people who take a tangential choice like this one where they start a clothing brand or create a lifestyle channel or publish a bunch of art templates and lo and behold grow it into something that genuinely garners a million dollars in revenue — and even if those sales die out and are not recurring, it gives them enough cash to purchase a handful of investments and build a safety net around their life + the invaluable experience to do it again. These people had an idea and more importantly, the audacity to execute; getting to where they are with a bit of intentionality, planning, and full disclosure: a healthy burst of luck.
There’s no reason why I can’t be me and you either.
On the cards for the month is a full-on review of 2025. I like to these retrospectives around the end of the year, similar to this one, to objectively and subjectively and incessantly assess what has gone right and what hasn’t.
Yes, this can be done at literally any point in the year but you cannot deny the halo effect that comes with the arbitrary turn of the calendar year.
It looks like I’ll be publishing a little over 80 articles this year on Substack. Next year, that number may be a little more, but may look a little less — because in addition to Substack, there may and will be others, with my operations well-underpinned with the eternally-experimental, delusionally-hopeful thinking of “why can’t it be both?”
substacks i read recently that have inspired action:
obviously, xanthe appleyard’s newsletter Party Friend, where she explores the digital culture that influences our lives and livelihoods
The more I heal, the less ambitious I become. by Nadia Meli 🪟
not all of you are interesting enough for photo dumps by Anna-Maria 📸
My 2025 Gift Guides - by Sweating It 🥭
Hi there, thanks so much for reading. I’ve never been one for paywalling my writing — cause then it would no longer be ‘in public’! If you’d like to support me and for whatever reason show it via monetary means — a link to buy me a coffee is available below:
Not that Substack doesn’t have a sophisticated algorithm — it does — I just didn’t think it could/would target me with the accuracy at which Meta does.
appreciate the shout out, sav! glad you enjoyed the piece !