Let’s start with the biggest and most important numbers: 1,501 posts and 5,663 days.
Everything starts with the work. Do it. Do it again. And again.
But that’s boring, and let’s be real — I’m not banging out an analysis of “5663”.
Like many writers, I check the dashboard every few days and was pleasantly surprised to see that I had finally crossed the 100 subscriber mark on Substack!
Whoohoo! But this screenshot only tells the last 3.8% of the story. Here’s the rest of it.
I started Grizzlypear.com in June of 2008 with two readers — me and my dad. (My girlfriend, now wife, never reads my ramblings cause she gets plenty in real time.)
Thirteen years later, I still had two readers. I would occasionally try to increase visibility to no avail, aside from Facebook spamming me to pay for a boost to the most recent post.
In mid-2021, I started an industry related newsletter. Even though the effort fizzled out in a few months, the effort got me onto Mailchimp with ten more ten readers, including my mom and sister, friends and three folks I’ve never met IRL!
About a year ago, I joined Post where I met a great crowd but after they slow-walked critical features, I jumped to Notes this April along with seven fellow travelers.
For the first few months I posted daily and grew steadily. Then September got crazy so I dropped down to a weekly schedule and growth slowed. So here is how I got to 113 readers:
What do I make of it all?
I’m an early 21st century anachronism with a personal blog. I entered that scene as it was being strangled by Social Media™, but I kept my site because I loved having my own home on the internet.
However, if you wanna grow, you gotta do what Zig Ziglar advises “You can get anything you want if you help enough people get what they want.” Or if you forgo the self help business, then be “so good that they can’t ignore you” (as quipped by Steve Martin).
These fifteen years of blogging taught me that it’s OK to just enjoy a hobby. I have a great job. I don’t need an audience to serve. I’m allowed to be a dilettante, exploring the arts without the discipline or patience to become great at anything.
I might be a disappointment to Zig and Steve, but I’ve had fun archiving these meanderings (board games, business books, sourdough bread, sketches, poetry, calligraphy) for future reference.
And then Substack swooped in to distribute this work and connect into a network of creatives. Notes is a great place to keep me inspired and challenged. So here we are, with this email slamming into a hundred inboxes!
Yes, this is just number, but it’s cool — three digits of cool! After more than a decade of silence, it’s gratifying to know people want to see my next letter. And it’s nice to get feedback. (Dopamine!)
Would I be bummed if the count slides back down? Of course, I’m human. But it is just a number. If my interests go weird, I wouldn’t want to force y’all to follow along. I’ll keep writing cause this is my practice.
Blogging is a good practice. The world might not need your input, but you need your input. Writing publicly forces us to look carefully and to process the richness that surrounds us. Write what you see, and your soul comes into focus.
Do it long enough and you’ll find a few folks to accompany the journey.
Jump in! Five thousand days later, you might stumble upon a goldmine of email addresses!