Behind the Scenes: How I Make Money, Realigning Content and Values, and Fresh Goals

Sharing some honest reflections on work and life.

Catching Up is a new twice-monthly column for paid subscribers, offering behind-the-scenes updates, in-depth recommendations, personal insights, and more.

In today’s post:

• Some work reflections and setting new goals

• How I make money: a behind the scenes look

• A few fun life updates and what’s been keeping me busy!

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First up, some work updates and reflections

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the direction of my work—and I wanted to give you a behind-the-scenes look at where my head is and what’s next.

Earlier this year, I wrote this down in Notes app: “Build back confidence and pride in my work. Create content I’m proud of, even if it means making less money.” But lately, I’ve been wondering if I’ve strayed from this goal, and I’m trying to figure out how to course-correct.

Finding a balance between making money and creating work that feels meaningful has been tricky. I’ve realized lately that the financial aspect is playing a bigger role in my decisions than I anticipated, and I want to be more intentional about how it influences me.

Switching to Substack (my new email platform as of 2023) has been a large part of the imbalance I’ve felt. Am I creating meaningful work that I can be proud of, or just work that performs? When I used Mailchimp, my previous platform of six years, I wrote my newsletters and they were sent out to my readers, some of whom would send back good old fashioned email replies. That was the extent of the interaction between my content and the public.

Now, because Substack has evolved into more of a social media platform rather than a just-the-basics email platform, the type of feedback I get is different. It’s been a net positive in many ways: for instance, I love seeing all your comments on my posts, seeing readers connect within them, and discovering new writers. On the flip side, having exposure to so many other newsletters and readers who aren’t subscribed to my newsletter is—I will admit—anxiety inducing. There is a sense of competition and performance that I’ve never felt before in publishing a newsletter. It’s also clouded my thinking about the kind of writer I want to be and the content I want to create.

For instance, I’ve enjoyed sharing my postpartum style journey with you, but I’m starting to feel a misalignment with my values around mindful consumption and authentic sharing. It wasn’t my original intention to go so deep into style content, but I saw that Substack-the-social-media-platform liked that content more than my other types of content (it got more likes, shares, and comments), so I doubled down on it.

Now I’m feeling a little “off” about my output and how it’s affected my behaviors at home: I’m spending more time browsing retail sites, ordering more stuff to try on, and receiving more packages than I know what to do with. My camera roll is stuffed with mirror selfies. What began innocently as an experiment has lost its way thanks to an algorithm and my weak, undefined values around creating style content.

On the other hand, I know that this content has genuinely helped some of you, which makes this all the more complicated!

Baby steps forward and my work goals

All of this has led me to pause and think about the kind of work that truly challenges and excites me—and is of value to you. I’m still noodling on where to go from here, taking baby steps towards where I want to be. Here’s where I’ve landed on a few different areas and work goals…