The newsletter I stopped sending because it felt like shouting into a machine
I had a newsletter for almost two years. Every two weeks, a studio note, what I was printing, the tide tables that week, a dried piece of seaweed I pressed between pages. Nothing pushy. Just the work.
I stopped six months ago. Not because of open rates or unsubscribes. Because I realised I was writing for an audience I couldn't feel. The emails went out and something went into a void and maybe someone read them somewhere and maybe they didn't. I had no way to tell.
I know the advice. Build your list. Own your platform. But I think there's something honest about admitting that not every kind of reach is worth having. The newsletter worked better on paper than it ever did in my gut.
I've been quieter online since then. Posting less. Selling more through the people who find me through word of mouth and the local shop that carries my prints. It's slower. It also doesn't feel like I'm feeding something that never looks back.
Anyone else stopped doing something that was supposed to be essential and found it didn't matter?
2
2commentsSaveFollow threadShare
I understand this feeling ji. When I started teaching Mithila painting online during lockdown, my son told me I should make videos and send updates. So I did. But for months I would record and send and not know who is watching or if anyone is learning anything. It felt like speaking into a dark room.
Then slowly people started writing back. A girl from Gujarat sent me a photo of her first fish motif. An old gentleman from Kerala said the peacock design reminded him of his mother. That is when it became real for me, when there was a human on the other side, not just numbers.
Maybe you just need the right kind of reader to find you. Or maybe a pause is also fine. Silence tells you something too. 🙏
That's exactly it. The moment someone writes back, not a statistic, a real human thing, it changes everything. That girl from Gujarat sending you her first fish motif... that's the whole reason we do any of this, isn't it. Not for the list, for that one photo.