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Gary Bloomer | SHAKING THE TREE # 300
Why I’ve stopped caring.
This is my 300th post here on Substack.
When I set myself the challenge of publishing a newsletter twice a week at the beginning of May, 2023 I thought “This is bonkers! You’ll never keep up with this. What are you doing?”
And yet here we are. There is a specific kind of madness that takes hold of a writer between article one and article one hundred. It’s a sort of frantic, sweaty-palmed desperation for relevance. You check your stats. You refresh your dashboard. You treat every unsubscribe like a personal character flaw and every “like” like a hit of cheap oxygen.
But something happens when you hit the 300-article mark on Substack. The gears shift. The engine stops whining. You don’t just find your voice; you find your “I don’t give a crap” voice.
The death of the “perfect” hook
Early on, you’re convinced that if the headline isn’t a masterpiece of psychological warfare, the world will stop spinning. By post 300, you realize the “perfect” hook is a myth told by marketing gurus to sell $997 courses.
Now? I write the truth as I see it. If it grabs you, fantastic. If it doesn’t, there’s another one coming on Thursday. When you have a body of work three hundred deep, no single piece of content has to carry the weight of your entire identity. It’s a mosaic, not a monolith.
The freedom of the unsubscribe
I used to mourn the departures. Now, I view a “User has unsubscribed” notification as a successful filtering process. Now, I think “Off you trot then. Bye!” At the 300-post mark you’ve likely pivoted, experimented, and annoyed a few people. That’s the point. If you aren’t occasionally clearing the room, you aren’t saying anything of substance. The 300-post threshold taught me that audience alignment is infinitely more valuable than audience size. I’d rather have 300 readers who “get” the brand of gasoline I’m selling than 3,000 who are just there for the free samples.
Quantity creates quality (eventually)
People worship at the altar of quality over quantity, but when they do that they forget that quality is a byproduct of repetition.
Post 50: You’re mimicking your heroes.
Post 150: You’re arguing with your critics.
Post 300: You’re finally talking to yourself.
That’s where the fewer fucks mentality comes from. You’ve made every mistake. You’ve had the typos. You’ve had the posts that you thought were genius go absolutely nowhere, and the throwaway, garbage, off-the-cuff post that you didn’t give a second thought to go viral. You realize you have zero control over the outcome, so you might as well enjoy the process while you’re doing it.
The new metric
My success metric is no longer the open rate. It’s the clarity of the thought.
Publishing 300 times has stripped away the need for external validation. It’s turned my writing from a performance into a meditative practice. When you stop performing, the anxiety evaporates. You realize the Substack void is vast, and the only way to stay sane is to stop shouting for attention and to start speaking for the sake of the conversation.
If you’re at post 10 or post 50 and you’re still stressed by the process, stick with it. Do not quit. I know it’s tempting to throw in the towel but hang in there: keep going. The lobotomy of indifference is waiting for you at the finish line of number 300. And trust me, the view from here is much quieter.
As always, thanks for reading.
—Gary
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Next time on Shaking the Tree: Let me up! I’ve had enough …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Originally from the U.K., Gary Bloomer is a writer, branding advocate, marketing specialist, and an award-winning graphic designer.
His design work has been included in Creative Review (one of the UK’s largest design magazines). Since 2009, he has answered over 5,000 marketing and business questions in the Know-How Exchange of MarketingProfs.com, placing him among the top 3% of contributors. He lives in Wilmington, Delaware, USA.