Writing 1,001 Substack Articles; Lessons Learned
Fin
As I prepared for the Professional Engineer licensure exam, I read about how an engineer should expect to study between 150-200 hours to pass the test, so I scheduled myself to study 300 hours, just to be safe. Ultimately, I completed 303 hours of study time three days before the test started so I didn’t study the last couple days leading up to it.
Anyway, this is article 1,001 of the 1,000 articles I set out to write in the summer of 2022. I don’t have much readership but I am proud of myself to accomplishing this goal nonetheless.
Today I am flying out to attend the annual Libertarian Party of Idaho convention so maybe something there will motivate me to keep writing or change my attention to something else useful. All I am trying to say is for now my Substack writing journey is complete.
With that in mind, here are the lessons I’ve learned after writing 1,000 articles here on Substack:
My crutch word is “that”. My writing is always better when I take the time to go back and explain the ideas in my head, instead of constantly referring to things using that word.
Advertising works, and the personal reputation I have around town does nothing to build a readership. You know how Joe Rogan built a two-man empire by word of mouth alone? Well, with just a one-man team I couldn’t even build half the following he has! ha, obviously this Substack page would be more successful if I spent more time marketing and advertising. I used to ping Badlands Media readers with links to my page every so often and I got a couple people to sign up by doing that. Besides doing that, I didn’t experience much readership growth.
I enjoy writing my Sunday Funday articles the most. The outlandish news summaries always seem to fit well into a one paragraph joke.
My articles would have received more readership if I built a persona outside of Substack or if the articles were more informative, I think. Youtubers generate views with engaging people who disagree with them, and pages like Pragmatic Engineer provide useful information to people. There are very few people who care about my opinion on things, so without including valuable information there isn’t much outside interest to read my page.
Lastly, I showed a friend my The Great American spirit and he asked, “What are you trying to achieve,” and my response was, “I don’t know, but by the time I finish my 1,000 articles I hope I am a little closer.” The point being, there is no singular interpretation, observation, or solution the country needs. In fact, there is no set of facts, data, or analysis the country needs either. It is bigger than that, so I like to think the world is filled with grey. Actually, lets make this easy by saying the world is filled with rainbow colors. Surely, you’ve seen an optical illusion like this:
All those dots are the same color but the colors around them make you think otherwise. Just like real world rainbow displays, the truth gets surrounded with a certain interpretation and it tricks you to think something is true when it actually isn’t. Lucky for Americans we have free speech, so if that picture is able to trick you but you show someone else then surely between the two of you the real observation about those dots would be made. Ultimately, I assume the average American is a decent person who thinks all their thoughts are the right thoughts a person should have, so how do you go meta with that type of human moral hubris? What structures hold together a group of people who all think their interpretation of the world is best? I don’t know (small-government Libertarianism is what’s best obviously) and I don’t think anyone really knows for sure (individual rights matter and should always be held paramount to collectivism) but I like to think out there somewhere is a good group of people doing the right thing (Libertarian Party of Idaho) and through all our ups and downs the human race will, at least 51% of the time, make truth rise to the top, which is when good things happen (but voting Libertarian is right 99% of the time so you should definitely do with that).
I am not sure what I should do from here. I usually spend 1-1.5 hours writing every day, so what do you think I should do with that time? Perhaps I can use my remaining GI Bill credits to take writing classes. I’ve also thought about taking Civil Engineer classes, because this Mechanical Engineer PE doesn’t provide much job opportunity in North Idaho, compared to my Civil Engineer counterparts.
Anyway, that’s it! Thanks for reading about The Great American Spirit!