Every time I sit down to write one of these notes, it dawns on me that not many people are going to see or engage with them.
Field Notes is just a week old and has few subscribers. I deliberately designed this site to have no likes, no comments, and no reposts. I've even turned off all notifications. There's no scoreboard.
I didn't want to get caught in the dopamine loop. Every time I join a new platform or reengage with an old one, I tell myself this time will be different, and it never is.
When I was building the site, I thought writing into a void would make the motivation harder to stoke, but it's been the opposite.
The creative tap has turned on this summer, and I just want to express myself. I'm generating new ideas for notes nearly every day. They're flowing effortlessly and I feel a lot of energy to write.
Early last week, on the heels of launch, I caught myself wanting to "save" certain ideas for future notes, when more people were following along and paying attention. One was a note about what I'm hearing from clients about AI. That impulse is familiar, and it belongs to the ambitious part of me that played and won status games on other platforms.
On X and even on Substack, I would spend considerable time thinking about, and sometimes obsessing over, what to write. Which post should I write? How might it land? When would be the perfect time to publish? I became precious with my ideas and writing process, hoping for a bigger audience or a better moment.
But here I'm starting to appreciate there's nothing to optimize or prove to anyone, and that's liberating.
With no scoreboard to check, I've remembered I can write whatever I want, whenever I want, no matter who shows up. Nothing has to wait for the right moment. I don't have to decide whether an idea is "good enough" or "important enough." If one arrives today and my creative energy is flowing, I can go for it.
What's left is just me and the page, and what's emerging when I sit down to write.
This approach is messier than what I used to publish on Substack, but it's also more fun. I'm just writing for myself, and that's been energizing.