What Have I Learned Writing This Newsletter for the Last Ten Weeks?

Reviewing the Newsletter Project After a 10-Week Streak

"It is not enough to be busy. The question is: What are we busy about?" - Henry David Thoreau

Talofa reader,

Last week was the tenth consecutive week of writing this damn newsletter, lol. I’m not going to say every week it landed on time, but every week, for the last ten weeks, I sat down, wrote some things, read some things, and then edited my writing until it made some kind of sense, and then out it went. Sometimes late on a Monday night, but more often than not, at 3 am on Wednesday mornings.

Sure, ten newsletters in a row are not a lot to write home about, but I think this is a good time to step back and review what the actual hell I’m doing and whether I’m headed in the right direction or need to make an adjustment before carrying on.

I started this newsletter as a mechanism for consolidating my thoughts across the many things I would think about on any given week. Anything I had learned that week, experiences I had that taught me something, I would draw on them and write it out in a weekly newsletter. I wouldn’t be short of content, surely? Now, writing is a great tool for organizing your thoughts. A lot of the great thinkers of our time were writers - Plato, Marcus Aurelius (I’m sure there were others), and that’s something I wanted for myself too. That’s the whole point of this newsletter - to write regularly, using it as a weekly opportunity to corral and organize my thoughts and develop the art of writing.

So, how well am I doing?

I’m a pretty harsh critic, especially of myself, but I also like to think I’m fair.

Me to me: “Hey, your writing sucks. But it’s okay. You’re just not talented in that way.” 😂

But seriously, on reviewing these last ten weeks of writing a newsletter, I can think of two key areas where changes can be made for the better.

Time to Think

I recently completed a short writing course for work, and in it, the writing expert showed a diagram of a timeline and positioned where and how much time the actual act of “writing” would take. Believe it or not, thinking before you write took up about 60%, and the editing after you finished writing took up 30% of the timeline. And smack-bang in the middle, taking the least amount of time, was the actual writing.

Why is this important to my story?

Because in the last 3-4 newsletters, I spent increasingly less time deliberately thinking about my topic before I started writing. Instead, I spent an inordinate amount of time mashing together writing, thinking a bit, reading a bit, and editing my writing. It's no wonder the last few newsletters were a struggle to write, they were late, and I would end up finishing them at some ridiculous hour of the morning.

One thing I recognise almost immediately in hindsight is that I wasn't prioritising the time required to sit down, think on the topic at hand, read up, research, and intentionally process the information so that my thoughts were fully formed and ready to write.

I have a pretty busy lifestyle of work, community work, some more community projects, some tech side projects, gym 3-4x a week, a dog, a relationship, some family, and then the “being overwhelmed with so much on that I check out and don't want to do anything with my life for 4-6 hours” at any given time. I say “work” like my role doesn't mean I'm flying internationally at least once a month, sometimes twice, and act like that has no bearing on my time and energy to then also sit, think, and write something that's coherent and well-thought-out. Every week.

Possible solutions? Find a dedicated space in your life and schedule to set aside and think about the topic that’s on your mind. Respect that time and space and commit to it every week. To make things easier on yourself, find a time that’s not jammed in the middle of your busy schedule that will rob you of the energy you need to dedicate to this act of thinking about your topic. This isn’t the writing part yet; this is just thinking about it.

That’s the first thing, the second key area was really picking what to think about.

Decide on a Niche

Now, this can be interpreted in a couple of ways.

One way is to choose a topic and become the one-trick pony, endlessly discussing cloud technology, which can become tedious and monotonous. It's possible to feel trapped once your brand is established and centred around a specific topic and you have this “audience capture” phenomenon happening and you just keep peddling and peddling and peddling this sh!t…

This is clearly the "fever dream" interpretation of picking a niche.

Another way is to decide on a specific list of tech that you're interested in, and give your perspectives on the intersection with the Pasifika experience. This approach frees you from the one-trick-pony bored-out-of-my-eyeballs, content creator hell, because you and what you’re doing with “tech & the intersection with Pasifika” - are the niche.

I do think, focusing on a specific topic and building on it every week is really what I want from this exercise. I want to expand my knowledge, dive deeper into a particular subject, and understand it from various perspectives and use cases. By choosing topics that interest me, I can avoid getting sidetracked by all the shiny new things in the newsletters I consume, and avoid becoming shallow in my analysis, especially when I know I’d probably lose interest in those shiny new things on a revisit anyway.

Of course, this is just theory. Perhaps I can build a sophisticated understanding of a topic by chasing all the new shiny things and tying them back to my primary interest. This approach might help me consolidate my understanding of the core subject and integrate new ideas to become an extension and expression of my existing understanding. Right?

Or maybe I do myself a favour, simplify my life by choosing a topic I’m interested in and curious to learn more about, including side quests, and explore that over the next ten newsletters.

Next Steps

Why do we do this to ourselves? Well, those who know me, and my many interests and projects, know my life is self-inflicted. So I’m going to keep pursuing this writing thing that needs me to think; thinking that leads me to understand; and understanding that hopefully helps me enjoy and find peace in my world.

That is ultimately what I want out of this life, right?

Changes to come - firstly, make time every week to think about my topic of interest, even if it's just to write down the topic this week, think on it, read up on it, and only sit down next week to do the writing part. And secondly, choose a niche - like really, really pick a lane, walk around it a bit, and then stick to it for at least ten newsletters. That’s the deal. Let’s do that.

Thanks for reading. I really appreciate it.

See you next week.

Learning

Things I’m actively studying or learning this week…

• Studying for the ‘AWS Certified Security - Speciality’ certificate - 59% through the course. CloudFront Architecture.

Building

Things I’m building or working on this week…

• Hashicorp Terraform + Proxmox to deploy VMs (in my home lab)

• Hashicorp Packer + Proxmox for Cloud-init VM images for the Home lab, this week - finally got this working…

• Setup my Proxmox lab for some K8s refresher and infrastructure work.

Interesting Reads

Articles or other writing that stood out to me this week…

• This was a buzzy read, consequentials, non-consequentialists…

Life isn't Sacred

Community

Other projects in community I’m working on…

• Pasifika Tech Education Charity - Providing Tech Learning Opportunities for the Pasifika Community — we had a field trip last week to Workday with 17 kids from KBHS and KGC.

• Pasifika Tech Network - A Network for Pasifika Tech Professionals & Learners — we’ve got a Tech Meetup coming up May 18th!