I tried starting a newsletter and failed miserably

14 May, 2026

I checked the 'email' tab here on BearBlog last night and I was surprised to see I'd had my first subscriber!

And so began the panic of what I do now...

I decided to sign up for ButtonDown to see if I could create a newsletter worthy of sending out to this subscriber and also to potentially look at another way of building my writing and understanding the direction that my creativity is heading.

Unfortunately, after signing up and staring at the 'draft your first email' screen for a solid 30 minutes, I realised that I had absolutely no idea where to start or what to say.

The biggest issue was pressure. Someone had given me their email address and was allowing me to send them something and I wanted that something to be something worth reading ¹.

Now, if you've read any of my recent posts, you'll know that I've been very high on being courageous in your creativity, but I also spoke about how difficult that is and last night, it was a ginormous monster baring it's incredibly sharp teeth right at me.

And the truth is that I was the one to back down.

But rather than feel defeated, I feel... Hopeful.

I know that I'm not quite ready to tackle the beast of a newsletter. So for now, I've let it go back to sleep with the understanding that his time is coming, I fully intend to stand up and slay the monster.

I suppose the reason I'm sharing this is so that you'll understand that you will have times when you'll fail with your creative pursuits, but you need to try and press on, you need to gather the courage and the strength to challenge and overcome them.

And I want you to see that if I can do it, you'll be able to do it to.

So, with that said; I want to practice what I preach.

By the end of the year, I want to have a newsletter that has sent a least one email, even if I only end up sending it to myself.

Courage is the name of the game after all.

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