The imperfect start of 2022.
It is going to be about extraordinary feats but also about mundane things.
Happy New Year folks! Happy Sunday & Happy January!
Yes, if you think that I am trying to compensate for my long absence through these good wishes, that is indeed my intention. Yes, I know, I should not have just vanished from the scene without any acknowledgement- no email? no nothing? quite wrong of me.
But I won’t say sorry, not because I am too conceited, but simply because I chose to take the break without giving prior information to anyone. There are quite a few content creators in my readers, and I know they will instantly relate to the enormous pressure that announcing a break brings with you. It’s like the world is kind enough to let you breathe only on the condition that once your break ends you will suddenly be the perfect version of yourself, creating the best content, doing the best possible things. And though I can’t speak for anyone else, I personally feel obliged to do productive things like reading, reflecting, exercising, writing, just to show the world that I was utilizing my break in a productive way. Yes, I get the irony, it is silly, but it is what it is.
The break no longer remains a break it becomes a preparation time for the pro-active performance that would be expected out of me once the break ends.
How many new ideas did you get? How many books did you finish? Did you paint or at least water your plants and make an aesthetic reel out of them? Did you post at least one quote about how hustle culture gets to us all and a break is necessary? Did you cook Thai curry? Did you journal? Did you do yoga?
You are not allowed to rest. You are just allowed to stop “productive” work. You still need to cater to passive productive things like reading, thinking and also engage in “therapeutic” activities like pottery, painting, and whatnot. And though this indicates a larger problem of how our understanding of productivity is too narrow and how all artistic pursuits are either relegated to being unnecessary or elevated to being therapy. But perhaps that is a newsletter for some other day.
So yes, I choose to be discreet about the break because I did not want the pressure and also because I was not sure how long my break was going to be. And to be particularly clear I was not on a complete haul, I was working over the last 2 months. But I contracted my work over various channels and this newsletter was one such important channel.
And now I am back! And I intend to be consistent and I intend to be experimental and I intend to be diverse. I intend to be a lot of things this year.
I came down with Covid on the very first week of this year :( So yaa, not a great start, but I know it will get better, it has to. I decided to write this newsletter despite my illness not because I wanted to be a beacon of productivity but because I wanted to. I am manifesting 2022 by writing this newsletter. I want to come back to this newsletter at the end of the year, and hopefully return back with a content heart.
I have been thinking in the last few days about my plans, about the content ecosystem as a whole, about the changing trends, emerging dimensions, and about how to go about it. I have decided to hone my craft in video content and also diversify my distribution channels for the current content we at PFA produce.
I have also been thinking about the community I am a part of, my readers, listeners, viewers, and their expectations out of me. I find it quite paradoxical that we say things like ‘Be you” and “create for yourself” and yet we consecutively work towards building a community, broadening our reach, and strengthening our appeal.
How can we work for ourselves and also for others at once?
We also say things like “stop looking at the numbers” while we are constantly trying to increase engagement. We are constantly reading, strategizing, analyzing the best ways to drive our numbers, the shares, the likes, the comments, and yet when being asked about the same we give self-important answers like “even if there’s one person who enjoys my content, I will think I have done a good job.” I don’t think this is a sign of hypocrisy or delusion. No, it is a sign of the dynamics of the industry of how we as content creators are expected to be so much all at once.
So 2022 for me, for us at PFA is going to be about breaking rules but also conforming to them. It is going to be about extraordinary feats but also about mundane things. It is going to be experimental and quirky. It is going to be EPIC!
