1 year of Substack

Reflecting on a year of Substack

It is truly hard to believe that I started my Substack a year ago! After reading The Anxious Generation and realizing how reliant I was on my phone, I wanted to intentionally take a day each week to be off of social media. However, I knew that I needed to replace that time spent on my phone with something else otherwise that vacuum of time would lead me right back to my phone. My no social-media Saturdays became the primary vehicle for fostering a writing habit and my Substack was born.

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

In my original post defining some of the goals of my Substack, I described this space as 1) an intentional place for me to write consistently and have some accountability to do so and 2) as a place for me to process ideas that I read/listened to/talked about with others. It has been fun to read back through prior posts and see exactly how this has transpired. I have written extensively on my love of productivity and accomplishment, the life of being a scientist, technology and the power of attention, and musings on books I have read.

In the past year, I have upheld my commitment to myself to write consistently every 2 weeks (besides a 2 week stint when I was sick). Even during busy seasons, I was able to pivot to repurpose and adapt some prior content for Substack which demonstrated my willingness to stick to something I said I would.

It has been incredible to see how practicing the craft of writing consistently over a year has led to some truly amazing opportunities. I had an online article published in Common Good about ‘Reading Good Books in a Swipe Culture’ which led to the opportunity to write a feature article for the print version of Common Good about the intersection between neuroscience and theology titled ‘The Science of the Brain and the State of the Soul.’ Had I not been intentionally writing and creating space to think about what to write about, I do not think I would have come up with the ideas for those articles and been able to execute on them.

My writing routine has been to get up early on Friday mornings when my husband goes to biblestudy, go to the gym, and then arrive at my favorite coffee shop at 7am and write from 7-8am before I start work. I find that for writing projects I do my best work in a coffee shop and it is a little harder for me to focus at home. Part of me wonders is if this is because I write for my job and work home though I would never write in the same space because it would cross my mental wires.

Typically, I already have an idea in mind that I want to write about and start there to see where the writing takes me. In the past few months, I have started using Notion to keep track of Substack ideas and jot some notes down about where I think some ideas could go (see an example of this below!). Personally, I benefit from coming up with an idea, noodling on it a bit in my subconscious, and then returning to it. However, once in a while I start my writing time without a firm idea of what a post will be about and then find it along the way (like Michael Scott and how he starts sentences and finds them along the way). I always make sure to leave my writing for a day and come back to it. This helps me engage the editing brain and I also know my brain has been working in the background and I may come up with a new idea. Typically, I will edit on Saturday which involves me reading the post, streamlining language, and adding any other ideas. Then I schedule the post to be sent out on Sunday. Once in a blue moon I will edit before church on Sunday, but try to avoid being in a crunch mode as that tends to not lead to great writing/editing.

Over the past year, I have found it amusing that I write/communicate for my job full-time and yet I also want to write for personal amusement/processing of ideas. It truly makes me believe that I am a writer at heart because I do not think I could stop writing even if I wanted to! It will be interesting to see what writing looks like in the new season of parenthood. I expect I will still journal (I do this every 2-3 weeks as a way to recap life), but I do not think my writing cadence will look the same. I for sure will not be able to go to a coffee shop every week and write! Maybe I will finally use voice to text memos to get ideas out. However, I truly love the process of putting pen to paper and find that I am not as eloquent in my speech as I can be in writing.

When I started this Substack a year ago, I did not realize how beneficial it would be for me. Besides growing in the craft of writing, having a space to write and process has really helped me work through some harder periods of life and take the time to really think about them. I have also loved the challenge to dig into some weighty topics, research, and read other viewpoints to help form my thoughts and how I wanted to communicate a topic.

If you have been along for this ride so far, thank you for reading! For me, having a bunch of subscribers was never the goal, but my goal has always been to just keep writing and honoring a commitment I made to myself. I believe I have done that well in the past year and I look forward to seeing what the next year on Substack holds!