I'm Getting Really Good at Being Bad (at things)

I'm not very good at being bad at things.

I don't mean I'm good at everything. I mean, when I'm bad at something, I act like an Upper East Side child who got last year's Labubu for Christmas.

I'm working on it.

This childish part of myself came to a head last year when I hiked the challenging, yet stunning, mountains of Chile and Argentina in Patagonia.

Every hike went nearly the same way:

The hikes started out flat and beautiful, meandering through lush valleys and past ice blue glaciers. But as soon as we'd reach our first challenging ascent, I snapped.

My mind would instantly go dark.

I can't do this. This is too hard. Why did we come here? This isn't fun. This isn't a vacation! I hate this. I hate hiking.

I'd get to the top to see this:

And I'd instantly chill. I can't believe I made it, I'd think. Why did I have to make the journey here so miserable for myself?

Granted, my grief was pretty fresh. I hadn't even lost my mom 2 years before.

Actually, everything on that trip was really fresh: I'd never ice climbed a glacier, kayaked 28-miles down a glacier river, or used my bare hands to hoist myself up and over rocks the length of my entire body caked in mud.

And I'd definitely never gone to the bathroom in the woods. (I'm from Philly. We eat hoagies and throw batteries at Santa 😂)

I'm actually really good at trying new things.

I'm just not good at being bad at them.

Or, at least I wasn't.

Something about that Patagonia trip made me come to. I didn't like my mindset, and it didn't feel like me, either.

I went to China by myself when I was 16. I've stood out in below-zero temps at Lambeau to watch the Packers beat the Bears. I've competed in HYROX, even though I had brain surgery!

I'm adventurous. I'm open to new experiences.

It's just that I'm getting better at being bad at them.

On the work front, this came to a head when I started a personal Substack last August.

I'm writing about building a life that exists more offline than online, the truth about building a business you love, and how I'm rebuilding myself after the hardest season of my life.

At first, it was uncomfortable for me to write about how my trip to Disney World felt like a metaphor for my grief or what happened when Amazon stopped being my default because I was so used to always having to be useful.

If a post wasn't "3 ways to grow your email list" or "5 things you must have in your contracts," I didn't use to write it.

A post had to "go somewhere," or "convert," or have a "clear call to action."

It was also the first time in a long time I'd written something that hardly anyone read or liked.

At first, I got one or two likes... usually from a friend. I posted weekly anyway.

The thing I'm proudest of, after having recently reached over 1,000 subscribers there, isn't that metric itself --

It's the fact that I kept going even when things felt clunky and uncomfortable. I didn't know how Substack worked, no one engaged with anything I wrote... it would have been easy to go back to platforms I'm used to. Ones I know I can "perform" on.

What I'm writing there might not be good. It might not even be useful to other people (gasp!).

I even have a selfish motivation to be there. I want to practice my writing so I get better at it. So the next time I write another book, it's even better than my first.

But the cool part is: I'm writing there before I'm good at it. While I'm getting good at it. Regardless of whether I'm good at it!

(Exactly what I talked about in last week's podcast episode, you've got to get good at something in order to build an audience for it.)

So as I write to you between hikes in Peru (HI FROM PERU, by the way!!) --

I'm practicing enjoying the journey. Letting myself be uncomfortable. Maybe even bad at it. 😉

Speaking of Substack...

The last time I did a podcast episode about why I started a Substack when I have a 62k subscriber email list here on Kit, you loved it.

So now that I've been writing there consistently for seven months and hit the 1k subscriber mark (no, I didn't drag anyone over from this email list to Substack)...

I thought I'd show you exactly how I got 1,000 subscribers on Substack. LISTEN HERE→​

This is the exact plan ^ I'd follow if you're looking to start something over there.

Just to be clear: Substack isn't a replacement for my list here on Kit. (I explain why in this episode.)

If you're looking for a social media alternative, however, that has better discoverability than a platform like Instagram -- or you don't have a website yet, but you want to write long-form content -- I think Substack is a great choice for that.

Once you listen to this week's episode of my podcast, On Your Terms®️ about how I got my first 1,000 subscribers on Substack --

Hit "reply" and let me know what your Substack thoughts are! Are you on it? Thinking about it? Let me know!

OK, I can't breathe up here at this insane elevation in Peru. I'm off to drink some tea and visit some salt mines.

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