Lessons From the Owl
I keep listening and learning, doing new things – here is what is and will come
During the last couple of weeks, various things happened. In the world, of course, as this is always the case, but also in the spheres of A Rich Life.
Let me try to catch up:
Lessons learned
From the owl you sent me by answering the questions asked in this forum, I found that:
You want less different topics
You want fewer articles per week
You want something that works on both web and mobile
None of this was 100% agreed between the responders, even though there were just a few responses, so I will try to not implement it all too strict.
From the history of Substack and the construction of the most popular stacks here by people who were already famous writers before Substack was invented, it could look like one topic, and daily, long, often very long, articles will be the way forward.
However, there are some problems with following this “popular practice” – since it isn’t the norm at all on Substack. These VIPs were invited, many of them were paid to show up, have been given various kinds of help to build a solid presence here, simply because Substack wanted some success stories to show the world.
So, these people do here what they already did elsewhere, and their fans from wherever they have been writing before (or maybe still do) have simply followed them here.
Other popular stacks are by journalists who were basically made redundant by the decline in the news media business over the last several years, now bringing their talents, often with the same form of expression, to Substack, doing consistently what they are known to do well.
None of these people are me.
As a writer, I have moved around various topics. Started my writing career as a child by writing songs, later humorous articles, cooking recipes, poems, and many other things, until I had a period with lifestyle topics like lighting, porcelain, music, and photography. Along all of this were technical writing, both as manuals, etc., and as occasional broader scoped articles about how things work. And I have written about leadership during the last maybe 10–15 years, plus occasional philosophical articles — and more.
This is me.
My way of thinking and writing is circling around many topics, which again is based on a holistic world-view where I always see connectedness between the various elements of life. The connections are life. The elements are just anchoring points for them. Life is movement, variety, and evolution.
The new plan
What I have learned must be obeyed! I must be true to my self while still trying to deliver something that makes sense for the audience — you.
So, I have ended up making a split: A Rich Life is now two substacks, of which one is the direct continuation of it, now called All of Life, with its mix of short and long, deep and light, transparent and opaque thoughts of all kinds, while the other, Turning Life, is more focused with closer-to-streamlined opinionated long-form articles that will develop in the direction of a more typical journalistic approach, as time and skills allow, and dealing with a defined set of topics.
All of Life is the outlet of the most creative stuff, sometimes to be found a bit silly or even primitive by some, at other times experimenting in a rather complex fashion. And everything in-between. It is about life as we experience it, feel it, about events and the odd phenomenon “now”. Not based on any fixed ideas of right and wrong.1 Not fully predictable in its contents, nor in its publication frequency.
Turning Life is the place for order and a strict focus on the world as it develops, looking at changes in time and space, in what we see and what we think, over some years. It is history and sociology more than anything else, but with psychology and politics included, as well as life philosophies and religions where they seem to affect the development of the world.
Turning Life will approach a fixed publishing schedule, where each of the topics treated (represented and grouped by Substack sections) of one article per topic each month. There can be an extra article now and then, especially if a guest writer can add something interesting that seems to supplement more than replace what was otherwise planned.
This means about 5–6 articles per month plus an occasional extra. A digest will be made at the end of the month, describing what was published and (to be implemented along the way) also describes what is planned for the next month.
I plan to award a “Person of the month” on a monthly basis, letting this be an opportunity to pick up some of the changes we face, represented by one person’s views and actions. This reward can be earned for both positive and negative reasons, meaning that the Person of the month is to be described, their ideas and actions equally so, and then any endorsement or appraisal will need to be added as fits, or the negative impact of what is described will be elaborated upon.
Turning Life is all about change, this way recognising the importance of seeing and understanding how life changes, rather than just being pushed around — because, only by understanding from where we came and where we are heading, we can create a small, free space in time that we can call “now”, in which we can then live and thrive.
Otherwise, we will always be on the way to something else that we don’t know what is, always stressed, always having our thoughts in some other time, some other place. We will then not be living a rich life.
Monetisation
This I have attempted already, but I realised that I was doing it wrong, as I have described earlier.
The new idea is to look at Turning Life as a project that should lead to switching on the paid subscription option — when I am happy with the shape and execution of the stack — to allow for dedicating more time to making the articles longer and more thorough. Additional larger feature articles plus other benefits for the premium subscribers may then be added.
All of Life may or may not get monetised. It will depend on the development in subscribers (and pledges) and ideas, as there should be some kind of reason behind offering something for money. The buyers should be there, and they should find it attractive to spend some money to get something extra. We’ll see how it goes with this.
I am still not one of the initial writing moguls who got solid help from Substack to get well established, and I still don’t have their impressively successful background, so any movement toward monetisation will no doubt become a lot more modest for my sites. But with a little luck, it will help me get to a point where I can dedicate a substantial part of my time to them.
Graphics and layout
I keep working on the visual appearance of the stacks, even though it is a bit up-hill, I think, especially when many of the improvements are invisible on the mobile app — which a significant part of the readers are likely to be using as their primary or only access to the stacks.
Nevertheless, for the benefit of those who can see it, I am trying to do some stepwise refinements of all graphical elements and other layouts, including text elements such as permanent pages and the selection and positioning of building blocks on the pages.
I will work a bit with the inner design of articles as well, such as vignettes and illustrations, and my plan is to move toward a situation where all graphics and photos will be home-made. That takes a while, since these are time-consuming activities, but it would be several steps better than stock photos and standard designs, I think.
A prosperous New Year
I wish you a happy New Year that will fulfil all your dreams or bring you closer to them — by understanding what exactly you dream about, or by actually reaching the dreams and your goals, whatever is the most relevant for you.
May we all read and write together during another year, share our thoughts and become bigger and stronger people by pouring our combined immense amount of wisdom into one big pool to dive into whenever we feel for it.
See you in the comments, and the next post, in Notes, and everywhere else where we can have a shared space to fill out with ourselves and each other, and all of our thoughts.
Everything I write and think has a humanist basis. This is the one predictable thing above all. I believe in the value of humans and cannot approve on behaviour that leads to disrespectful or harmful treatment of others, be it on an individual, arbitrary basis, or as a systematic all-comprising state philosophy.