I sent out the last edition of my Explore and Observe newsletter this weekend. I started it in the summer of 2019 thinking with the goal to share something I’m passionate about with a lot of other people. I saw it as an asset, something that would grow with time and hopefully provide significant benefits to other people as well. Frankly, I still think it’s a good idea, but this week I quit. Here’s why:

1. I realized I no longer enjoyed the process and did not look forward to writing the newsletter. It felt like a burden and was only getting done because I was forcing it. I felt guilty about not wanting to work on it more. I suspect in the end I liked the idea of having a newsletter more than actually writing one.

2. I’ve become increasingly sensitive to anything that requires yet more screen time of me considering how much time I’ve spent on a computer during the pandemic. I really don’t want to spend additional evening and weekend hours on my computer doing something I didn’t really enjoy (see #1). (I know that sounds oxymoronic since I’m writing this on an internet blog. I handle that by writing my first drafts in longhand, transcribing using software, and then I just do some final cleanup and post it online.).

3. I struggled to grow my subscriber base. The last edition went out to 142 people (many of those friends and family). When I started I was thinking a few thousand subscribers in a couple of years would be reasonable. I experimented with a couple different ways to attract more people like cross-promotions and social media. But doing that well requires me to spend more time on my computer (see #2) learning more about how to optimize things I don’t enjoy (see #1) like social media. I could outsource and hire someone to handle these things but that becomes a money sink really fast.

4. I didn’t feel like there was much value in continuing. All the newsletters were similar in style so I wasn’t expanding my writing skillset, and the turnaround time didn’t give me enough time to experiment. There’s also no editor to help me get better. I never really took the idea of monetization seriously, but let’s be honest, in my daydreams I could collect enough followers to start offering a paid version or make money for charities.. I do think there was value to the folks who read the newsletter (because they so much as told me so) but the relatively small number of people reading (see #3) made the outreach value proposition a weak one.

Now that we’re here it’s easy to play the “what if” game. What if I hired someone to help grow my subscriber base? What if I played with the format more? What if I just stuck with it for another year or two to see what happens? What if I tried to engage people more? What if I made it into a podcast?

Regardless, I am content with my decision. If something is not fun, you’re not willing to put in the time and money to improve it, and there are minimal benefits, it seems like the right time to move on.