Talofa reader,
I often don’t appreciate that there’s a couple of 100 people still subscribed to this newsletter.
At one point, before I turned it off, several of you were paying subscribers. In a world that sees “going viral” and having a million followers as a sign of success, we often don’t see the forest for the trees- a couple of hundred people, who deliberately signed up and look at and read my writing, is still a couple of hundred people- and that is a small miracle to be quite honest, because who am I?
I’m not a public figure, I’ve done a few things in public, but this is still an amazing stat, when I step back and think about it.
So, in that spirit I am truly grateful you’re here, you get these emails and you have a read of what’s on my mind at any one time these posts come through.
I appreciate you haven’t seen or heard much from me in the last… several months? And that’s definitely not for a lack of thoughts or things to say LOL. It’s just been a bit of a weird (and wonderful) time for me personally, professionally, spiritually etc.
Sometimes I’ll write through it, and I think it shows in my writing, but this time I chose to just stop- have a think about the world, look around and see if I could still see everything around me, not just the thing I’m currently hyper-focused on, cos often when that’s the case, everything else around me is blurry.
I never thought that was an issue before, I’m usually hyper focused digging into some new tech, or social issue, and I like going deep. But when that’s applied to anything and everything, the world starts getting really out of balance for me.
So, just stopping- having a look around, and if I’m not feeling it, I’ll just try to do something else like go to the gym, or watch a show and try to turn my brain off.
Then I remembered a lot of what helped turn my brain off, or at least settle it down, was writing…
So there’s been this weird loop of “I’m too hyper-focused, so I shouldn’t write anything, I’ll do something else to settle it down, that turns out to be very temporary, now I’m too hyper-focused, so I shouldn’t…”
That’s the weird1.
The wonderful is (and I will do a proper post and share of it at some stage) getting my Pe’a. I took some time off in July (almost a month), to receive this and heal up before getting back to work this month.
Ok, just remembering I didn’t come here to give y’all an update on life in general, but that I’m going to be moving off substack.
I’ve thought about it for a while for various reasons, and also wanted something that was just email based.
I still have plenty of thoughts and things I want to write about, and looking to make a fresh start on a different, more ethical platform (sure, what constitutes ethical these days, right?), but also, this place has turned into a hyper social media platform and I kinda just want to step off to the side somewhere and keep writing.
So I thought I’d just get in touch, say hi, hope you’ve been well, I’m moving and you’ll get another email from me soon (you shouldn’t have to do anything, the tech these days makes everything transferable to the next).
talk soon, ia manuia,
Ron.
Also, a lot of my content strategy and online branding has been done while in this hyper focused state, substituting “planning” in for “doing” and the results of that are… kind of telling.