Looking Back at 2022
Allen's Professional Curiosity Newsletter - the Story to Date.
TL;DR: What does writing after month 3 feel like? Response: It can lead to burnout.
Hello Professionally Curious One!
Happy 2023.
I’m in the mist of redoing my creative systems to be in line with my physical exercise routine, working calendar, and video game goals.
I’m excited for 2023, and I’m not sure quite sure what is in store. What I do know is I’ll be writing, and I’ve decided to expand beyond Crypto and talk about more general curiosities, not just crypto curiosities.
To kick off this year, here’s the story of my content creation journey on Substack Newsletter. While I do create on LinkedIn, this Substack Newsletter where my mind lives.
For those of you who have started writing, or want to know what writing beyond month 3 feels like, this piece is for you.
Cheers,
Allen
My Content Creation Journey So Far
How I Got Started Writing
TL;DR: What drove me to create this newsletter was frustration with existing literature that was too technical for me.
Last year I started writing about cryptomining. It came about because my impulsiveness curiosity led me to purchase quite unjustifiably expensive hardware and software to get into cryptomining.
I found many shortfalls in trying to explain what it was and how it work. The graces of the internet didn’t provide me any succinct information that I could also share with others in a way that didn’t also invite “ignore that, ignore this, and definitely ignore this other thing”.
After a few bouts of my own frustration, I realized that a lot of blockchain technology content was too technical to be understood in a way that was quick, sharable, and not at all derivative of a news site.
Thus the creation of the Professional Curiosity Newsletter.
A past life deconstructing the most complex things down to their granular mechanics and “so whats”, only to be succinctly summarized into the length of a tweet, could be put to use.
This is how the “TL;DR:” sections of my newsletter came to be.
TL;DR: Too Long; Didn’t Read.
The Support to Start
TL;DR: The critical spark came from all the people who said yes.
Before posting my first post, I was able to get an encouraging amount of sign-ups for a newsletter I hadn’t yet written. 67 people actually, of which substack has “5 starred” them on my dashboard.
I quite appreciated their support, even before I even “began”.
If I haven’t said it yet - thank ya’ll for “kickstarting” and being at the start of it.
The First Piece
TL;DR: Starting off with the hardest topics.
With an initial audience set, I published my first public piece in January 2022, and as an insane challenge, I was given my second topic to write about called “Defi Yield Farming”. That topic is absurdly difficult topic to learn about, even having a background in financials and technology.
I am still pretty proud to have broken down the many aspects of Defi yield farming, and I’m also at the at point where I have carried that learning into product + accounting technical processes.
And for the next few months, everyone saw my relationship to Crypto deepen as I explored and wrote about what I was learning, and what it means.
The First Evolution
TL;DR: Diversifying what I create beyond Crypto Explainers
I had written 17 explainer pieces between January 2022 and May 2022. NFTs, Metaverse, even some accounting topics.
However, I hit the first content creation burnout trigger which was “Do I even want to continue writing about only crypto” and do I want to continue writing only “explainers”.
The answer is no but I did have to start somewhere to unblock myself. For me explainers are the easiest form of content I can produce but they quickly become less meaningful to me as you learn all the basics and foundations. At somepoint it’s a rehash of the same thing, and that’s not very authentic to me, not in this medium.
My current content trajectory brought a sense of chore and dread.
When reflecting on that, I concluded that I wanted to share more things about me, not just Crypto.
So thus was born the First Friday Flight, which placed a spotlight on my career break reflections.
The flights were simple - what am I up to, what did I reflect on, and what’s on my mind. In some iterations, you may only see 2 of the 3 parts - and I was okay with that.
After publishing a few Friday Flights, I learned that this type of content has a name: “Relational Content”. I am not trying to teach you a new technical knowledge topic; instead, I’m sharing some things on my mind and offering some introspection. In a way, it helped me remember non-technical thoughts.
Note on Relational Content: I learned of it because I follow the Samir and Colin podcast, two former Lacrosse Players who focused on Lacrossed who pivoted into talking about Content Creators in general. Great podcast to follow as they examine the different niches and burnouts of content creators.
The Second Evolution
TL;DR: The Long Haul of the 2nd Half of 2022
From May 2022 to December 2022, I would produce two pieces of content to this newsletter every Wednesday and Friday, while concurrently getting busier in my professional life. That was a very hard thing to do, and I wish I could say I was successful at publishing consistently.
By July 2022, I was experiencing severe Wednesday Crypto-Only Explainer burnout. To address it, I started to change the form of my Crypto Explainers - instead of doing the “100 Level” and “200 Level” explainers on topics, I went for long form stories. I tried to intersect my curiosities from one industry, with curiosities of other industries. Making fun of Celsius tided me by.
While this brought a new perspective for me, and even a few more pieces, by the end of September, I elected to cool-it with the Wednesday Crypto pieces, and instead focus on my Friday Flights.
Turns out, I was running out of things to talk about in the Crypto Explainer front that didn’t illicit a “who cares” trigger from me. And that’s when I knew, my apathy was coming back, and I was burning myself out there.
I wanted to keep writing.
I just didn’t want to keep writing only about crypto.
Thank You
TL;DR: Thank you for sharing your curiosity with me.
It’s January 2023, and I am initiating the third evolution of this Newsletter.
Before I evolve the Newsletter to be more in-line with what will recharge me, I want to express some gratitude:
Thank you for subscribing.
Thank you for following.
Thank you for reading and seeing what is my 2nd brain.
Thank you for texting me, DMing me, or even roasting me.
Thank you you for keeping me accountable.
And most of all, thank you for your curiosity.
I hope I can further invigorate you, and even get you to write too.
Happy New Year.
Allen
