Micael
i’ve changed a lot. The newsletter stayed pretty much the same.
11:30pm on a Wednesday. I was just running a preliminary check to see what had changed on the newsletter's back end since it started. The report comes back clean: Account Created — June 2023. First post — September 21, 2023. Etc, etc.
I read that line with my eyes half-shut, the way you do when you already suspect you're about to hear something you don't want to hear. Three years?
I knew it had been more than a year — in my head, two. Not three. Three is the exact length of my entire undergrad degree, it's more than most of the relationships I've come to know — and almost the same amount of time people waited for the final season of Euphoria. 3 years is a lot of time.
I started this project for a handful of reasons, none of them particularly noble, all of them true. I wanted to understand more about digital marketing. I wanted to force myself to stay informed. I wanted to keep a certain kind of relationship with my family in Brazil and friends who don't live in the same city as me anymore. And maybe grow a community that could turn into a second source of income and give me a bit of my desired financial freedom, as I so often write about.
But I also knew — because I'd already watched it happen to many people before — that most of these personal projects die in neglect after a while. And that the hardest part is never the idea, it's the routine. You've probably felt this with some project of your own: it's never the beginning that breaks you, it's making space for it in a week that doesn't cooperate. For me it was about not leaving you hanging, and by extension, not leaving myself hanging.
So I did.
Some weeks it flowed and I felt like I was born for it. Some weeks the newsletter was a terrible weight. And it's honestly so hard to push through when the only thing in your head is "well, nobody's forcing me." Deep down though, I knew that discomfort was part of the process. I wanted to have this commitment with myself. To take myself seriously enough to keep the plan going. And I say this with real pride: in three years, traveling or not traveling, in 40-hour work weeks and 60-hour ones (never much past that, thank god), I never once failed to write an edition. Not one. But without ever realizing it, that became enough.
Until three months ago — yes, that same Wednesday night from the start — when I ran into all my ghosts at once: three years had passed and, even though I'd never failed to write, what had I actually done to move the real plan forward? Nothing. I'd left it exactly in the neglect I feared most — just with the perfect excuse ready, that keeping the newsletter alive was already work enough on its own.
That's when, with the same energy as someone who, three months before summer, decides they're finally doing the perfect summer diet expecting a miracle, I decided to do a bunch of things at once that I'd been putting off for years.
I decided to build a proper website for the newsletter, with an archive page, an FAQ, an about page, login, and a few more things still in the works. I decided to rethink the logo from scratch, the way I'd always envisioned it but that, back when I started, AI still couldn't pull off. I decided to build automations and a referral program for the loyal friends who like sharing the newsletter with people they care about. I decided to add a direct WhatsApp share button, for whenever you read something worth passing along. And, of course, to learn AI video and music from zero to make the teasers and the launch video that came with all of it. All of that in eight weeks, right in the middle of one of the heaviest periods of the year, both at work and in my personal life. It was completely irresponsible of me. But the guilt of having left it aside for three whole years, living off the basics — write, publish, repeat — had gotten too big to ignore.
And here's the part I didn't see coming: somewhere in the middle of that irresponsible sprint, I realized how much Tanamesa had already given me without me ever asking. I've been reflecting a lot about it in my non-existent free time. It gave me a place to sort out my thoughts. A place to write about things I'd never told anyone. A place to open up and be vulnerable even while standing, ultimately, in a safe space.
In the beginning, plenty of people read and wrote back. Then it thinned out. There were editions I wrote practically convinced only my dad would read them, anxiously waiting for his positive reinforcements. There were editions I wrote just for myself, wondering why keep going if nobody was reading anyway. And then, out of nowhere, a reply would land from a total stranger saying they loved this edition of the newsletter — and I had no idea they even read it.
Three years is a long time to ask someone to stick around. If you're someone who loves me and used to read every single edition and doesn't read every one anymore — that's fine. Genuinely. If you think of the newsletter as an art project, part of making art is accepting it has to be made for yourself first — and that, often, even the people who love you most won't be your audience. The same way a singer can have friends who don't like his music, or a painter can have a girlfriend who doesn't get his paintings. That was a complicated thing to work through these past few years. Understanding that if I made the newsletter and wrote what I wrote, it had to be for me first — and if you read it and liked it, great, that was the bonus. But it should never be done for you (no offense).
What Changed (and What Didn't)
Recently, I've started noticing more lines on my face than I remember having in the mirror. A few extra expression marks that made me stop and think about how much I've actually changed in these three years. You know my relationship with time passing isn't the healthiest in the world — I track it the way some people track regrets — but there was something oddly nice about it this time. Proof, maybe, that the changing happened whether I was paying attention or not.
I changed jobs more than once. Changed apartments more than once. My personality shifted in ways I sometimes look back on and barely recognize that little twink I used to be. I've become a morning person (sort of). Fall in love with reading (sort of). Stopped using alcohol to pretend I'm an extrovert (sort of). And I learned a lot about myself, and about certain blocks I still need to work through to finally unlock this thing's potential.
I changed a lot. The newsletter stayed pretty much the same. So here's where I stand: I'd still like this newsletter to grow, and to eventually become a source of income and a community I'm proud to be part of. But there's a whole journey between being ready for that and where I am right now. I still don't know if this is one of those diets that lasts two weeks before I'm back to pizza at 2am, or if it's the start of an actual lifestyle change. Ask me in six months.
I don't know how long it'll take me to take the next step, and I want to open up this conversation more with you about how I feel about it and what that step should be. But for now, what I really wanted was this: to explain and lay out a retrospective of how I got here, where this rebrand came from, talk about the good and the bad of setting expectations for yourself, and give an honest review of how I feel about this project.
Thank you, truly, to you, reading this, and to you if you've been reading along all these years. To you who cares, who shares, who engages, and who's ever reached out about something you read. In a lot of hard moments, it's those comments that gave me the strength to keep going. And I want to say: for this next phase, more than ever, I'm going to need you too. But more on that later.
It's past midnight again as I write this — not quite 11:30 on a Wednesday, but close enough. And this time, when I look at the numbers, I'm not scared of them. I just don't know yet what they're going to say next year.
With love,
Micael.
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