Think Week #10
You can be known for more than one thing. You can pursue more than one dream.
Writing and Programming
Some days are just hard. You don’t want to read, you don’t want to write. What you want is to be loved. As a writer, you want to be read. Even that’s not quite enough sometimes. You need someone to reply to your newsletter with gratitude and praise. You want someone to acknowledge your existence. One soul to respond.
I had such a day this past week.
I couldn’t shake it, so I had to write.
What’s encouraging is we’re not alone in these struggles. I remembered the phrase “write for yourself first, the world second.” It completely changed my perspective. Write for the joy of writing. Write to obtain clarity.
If I were truly to write for myself first, I would need to start writing about programming and technology. It’s been a critical part of my life for the past decade, ever since I left the music industry and taught myself how to code back in 2014.
I began to think about this note.
For me, that’s writing and programming.
This is why I changed the name of this publication from Indie Thinkers to Code & Prose. Code & Prose will be a daily newsletter about tech and literature through the lens of Artificial Intelligence. The delivery is going to be unique. Instead of emailing subscribers every single day, you’ll only get an email once a week. I plan to publish daily but I don’t want to clutter your inbox. I’ll share everything I’ve written from the past week on Sundays via this Think Week format and Notes.
Indie Thinkers will now live at indiethinkers.com.
For Indie Thinkers, my focus will be more on curation and quality over quantity. If you want to help, the most valuable thing you can do is visit the website once a day and submit your work whenever you want to share something with the world.
I also highly encourage you to submit someone else’s writing.
My vision for Indie Thinkers seems so distant. I want to help other indie writers reach bigger audiences. But how can I accomplish this without having a big audience of my own? Seems like an impossible mission. Classic chicken and the egg problem. The only way I will win is if I don’t quit. This is a long game and I need to remind myself of the rules more often than I realized. I can’t discount small numbers. If I can help a writer get one subscriber, that’s still meaningful.
I’ve been writing for only 10 minutes now but I already feel some joy coming back. Realizing I don’t have thousands of subscribers or a ton of engagement. All I need to do is focus on one. Just focus on one reader at a time. That first reader is me.
Notes
Indie Thinkers
: “9,661 writers have upgraded their membership to the “Friends of Medium” payment tier. If you don’t know what that tier gives you, the answer is nothing. It is literally just the ability to pay writers more. I upgraded to that tier the first day it was announced because as an editor I want to pay my writers more when I read their stories. Over a million members, and not even 10K people upgraded.” — Source
: “Most people think Substack Notes is like X. All you need is to: post short-form content, stay consistent, show-up. It’s not to me. Yes, Substack Notes has this social media element, but it works very differently.” — Source
: “Wake up one morning and open your computer. Sip a cup of coffee. Smile at your crypto fortune. See all the Stripe emails for product sales. Think you’re a big shot. Consider ripping out a cigar and posting a selfie of you smoking it on social media. For fun, check your digital wallet. Notice a withdrawal of more than $1M.” — Source
Fab Five
Going direct, dangerous analogies, institutional collapse, ganging up with Gen Z
Bad Habits, Vicious Cycle, Driving Force, Beliefs, Virtuous Cycle
Fin
I’m going to write for myself first and the world second. I’m going to follow my curiosity wherever it may lead. During this journey, I’ll discover new writers who are feeling the same emotions I felt this past week, and I’ll be there to support and share their work. If you know of any writers that you think I should feature in my newsletter, reply to this email or submit a link on indiethinkers.com.
— Daniel
Thank you so much! Lots of precious stuff to read!