A fresh start
I'm (once again) focusing more on long-form writing and more intimate relationships instead of fast consumption social media like Twitter.
I started this Substack and wrote the first and the last (to date) entry precisely two years ago. Funnily, I wrote and sent out both from the very same location of Tropical Nomad coworking space in Canggu, Bali. I even sentimentally placed myself in the same room. It hasn’t changed at all. There’s new asphalt on the street outside now, though. And, I swear I did not come here just to have a nice coincidence to write about.
When I was starting it, I wanted to document Mate’s way to €1m/year. I was infected with an idea that we had to hire and grow, and I was doing a lot of things that I saw someone was doing and was “more successful” than me and I was blindly copying them.
Now, two years later, Mate still isn’t making €1m/year. In fact, we practically stopped working on it full-time.
I remember the time when I was so obsessed with discipline that I’d force myself to get up at 6 AM to arrive at the coworking space earlier and have a longer working day. I’d set deadlines for myself. Or, “made them up” would be a more precise way of saying it. Because I don’t need one. Never did. I have no boss, I have no VC vultures floating above my head, I have no shareholders to report to. Still, I was imposing deadlines on myself. I used to do weekly calls. I used to stick to a 10-6 working schedule.
Was there a real need? No. Did I see “everyone” doing it and thought “well, this is how you gotta do it then?” I most definitely did.
So, in these two years, I did not become a millionaire, get published on TechCrunch, or raise a $350m pre-seed; neither did I achieve any capitalistic definition of success.
These were fantastic years, though. Especially 2022. I ditched all the toxic “productivity” concepts I’d imposed on myself previously. I don’t have a fixed schedule now. I don’t do any calls at all. I don’t have a KPI for with how many people I have to connect in a month. I don’t have revenue goals. The obsessive thought about increasing the headcount and I have broken up.
Instead, I mostly spent this time learning how to listen to what I really like and focus on that and cherish that, and smoke out things I don’t from my life entirely. While keeping in mind that ultimate perfection is not achievable, though.
I’m now trying to apply this practice and slowly starting to work on new things, trying to find what will genuinely fit my personality and interests, without being star-struck by all the shiny things others are doing around me. Blinders they put on horses maybe aren’t such a bad idea for a happy peaceful life, after all.
It’s a very long process that mostly comprises lots of practice, but I find myself enjoying what I’ve got much more often now than before.
And now that I don’t force myself to sit in front of a computer Monday to Friday to “work on my business like a normal person” I have the clarity of mind to write and think about new things now.
And on this spiritual note (and why I decided to revive this Substack at all), I am thrilled and honoured wanted to announce that I’m dropping the damned productivity theme that it started with and pivoting it to a mere personal newsletter.
I'm not planning to teach you anything. It will be very I-centred. Bits of my journal, combed up for the public eye. Somewhere between conversations I could have with my close friends (although some of the readers are my close friends) and content that's favoured by the Mr Musk’s vanity algorithms.
Sometimes I look back at what I wrote down years ago and it hits frightfully close to what I still think nowadays. I wanted to maintain a more intimate relationship with a more enclosed circle 2 years ago. And here we go, I've come back to this idea.
This sometimes makes me think that thoughts are like a recursive function — whatever groundbreaking thought I latch on to now — I'd had it before already, it just passed by me unnoticed.
Coming back to the “I’ve seen everyone doing it” plague that was damaging my brain for so long — for almost four years, I was fixated on one more idea — that Twitter is crucial for a tech entrepreneur like me.
On January 18th, a dear friend of mine asked me about how many “useful” connections I got from Twitter in the last year. Even though I didn’t like the word he used. Useful. I stopped thinking of people as useful or not. It’s either I like spending time with them or not. Without thinking too much about whether they can do me a favour or something. Every single beautiful thing that happened to me was unpredicted. It happened when I released the maniacal desire to control everything.
Anyway — I dreadfully realised that the answer to my friend’s question was not many. I’d been pouring all that time into Mr Musk’s social network and the result was rather vague. Of course, I applied my new thinking to it — there’s no need to measure it with KPIs — it’s more a matter of whether I was enjoying Twittering or not. And I realised, too, that it wasn’t so clear.
I like writing a lot. I have liked it since high school. And I’ve been writing a lot, too. Some of you maybe even read longer things I wrote in the past.
My friend opened Pandora’s box of thoughts that were sitting in my head and waiting to be released with his simple question.
I started questioning whether the Twitter format is the right fit for my writing and whether it’s gesund for me at all.
Although I've been mocking LinkedIn for as long as I’ve been using the internet, I realised to my surprise, — when I started writing more for Affe — that their format fits my natural style better, actually.
I'm not natural at producing viral content. I'm more into producing long thoughtful sentences. The never-ending fight for impressions to please the algorithm is not my war. Polarising content, insane frequency, having to forge hundreds of shallow internet friendships.
Fast consumption isn't for me. I cannot keep up with people for whom it's natural to crank out 50 tweets a day. For me, it's a challenge. They're going downhill — free, happy, and fast. For me, it's like climbing a hill on a bike with no gears and with a backpack full of stones.
And, fast consumption media brings the voices of people for whom it is a natural thing right into my ears and into my brain where it further fuels my self-doubt.
This being said, I will try to shift my focus from Twitter to Substack. To smoothen the transition, I’m scheduling tweets via Typefully and sometimes opening the website to reply to replies to my tweets, but I’ve stopped reading the feed altogether.
I’m feeling happy that I can write this now without any constraints and without thinking about the likes or views it will get. The intrinsic nature of Substack’s blog/newsletter hybrid doesn’t give the spotlight to those. I’m looking forward to writing more for myself, and you’re welcome to read it too, if you want.