What happens when you keep going?

Dear friend,

It’s been over three years since I sent you a newsletter, which is both a long time and a very long time. Time enough, in fact, to start a business, release a music album, and become the father of a small human who now climbs furniture with the confidence of someone who’s never paid for German health insurance.

During this time people would occasionally ask if I was still writing, or “whatever happened to that novel?”

I’d say yes, yes I am writing, because I was, but not in the way they meant. Not in a DeLillo, Didion, Cusk serious novelist way. I was writing mostly tax returns and emails.

The truth is, I stopped writing for a while. Not just because I was busy, but because I fell out of love with it. Or maybe just out of rhythm. It stopped feeling alive. It started feeling performative, somehow.

But then I started writing short, oblique essays. And then scripts. And then I started filming those scripts. On purpose. For the internet. Specifically, for YouTube, which is a sentence I never imagined typing outside the context of “things I will never do.”

But I’ve been doing it. Quietly. Weekly, more or less. For a year now.

And this week, I made a video reflecting on what I’ve learned from this year of gentle experimentation. It’s partly about the three types of curiosity I discovered while doing it. But mostly it is about what happens when you keep going.

Because I started not knowing how to operate a camera. Or what to say. Or how to make a thumbnail. The algorithm is unforgiving and the tumbleweed is really damn loud over there. The excuses to quit need no invitation, they just barge right in alongside my toddler and wake me up in the middle of the night.

But if I’ve learned one thing from YouTube (and toddlers), it’s that wilful presence yields unexpected results, and strangely - beautifully, even - they have both brought me back eventually to writing.

Not the pressured kind. Not the capital-L Literature kind.

Just this: me, you, a few hundred words sent or filmed with care. A thread picked up after a long time. Quiet observation. Ideas explored from the inside, out.

And that’s what my last year or three have been about. That’s what the video is about.

I hope you like it, and I hope you are well.

What's been going on with you?

Best, Adam