A Beautiful Failure: My Month Without Newsletters
It was supposed to be a break. Then a rock stuck in my brakes.
I ended my second month on Substack with a break.
Not the kind you plan.
The kind that creeps up with the burnout, confusion and a little too much “what’s the point?”
Everyone says the first 3 to 6 months are meant to be messy. Mine felt like I was talking to the version of me who needed to hear it.
But she wouldn’t listen.
When May arrived in a flash, I wasn't quite ready.
The Kaleidoscope project has been dear to my heart since I discovered it back in March. Kudos to
After April’s creative high on Intention, the new theme arrived with a bang:
Experiment.
My first thought?
Disappear. Leave Substack for a month. See if I miss it.
Spoiler alert: I did.
But not in the way I expected.
The Vineyard Detour
A few days into my planned disappearance, life sent me an omen. Literal, not poetic. A rock got stuck in my brakes while I was driving through a picturesque vineyard.
I ended up spending hours waiting for a mechanic with unlimited thinking in paradise.
And the minute I got out?
I posted a Note.
That moment flipped my experiment.
I was no longer disappearing from Substack.
I was just shifting forms.
Newsletter vs Notes
Ever since I fell in love with essays and speech writing back in school, I’ve leaned toward longform. I felt like my thoughts needed room to breathe. Writing pages felt natural. Short form never did.
That’s why Notes first caught me off guard.
They feel punchier, more relatable, easier to digest and perfect for how we consume content these days.
But as simple as they seem, they’re not always easy to write. Capturing a full idea in just a few lines takes more clarity. They’re tight like a poem, but work like a headline, a conversation or a small truth bomb.
Sometimes, a good Note carries an entire newsletter in a few lines.
If I were painting a picture, newsletters would be realism-rich, detailed and textured.
Notes are surrealism and beyond.
They tap the subconscious. They leave hints. They give room for interpretation. They ask you to feel, not just read.
What I Learned From the Notes-Only Month:
Writing Notes in bulk? Sounds smart. Never worked.
My writing lives in the here and now. Pre-written Notes feel like stale bread — dry, disconnected and lifeless.Some of my best Notes are inspired by Substack connections.
Inspiration sparks in the Substackverse conversations: a comment, someone’s insight or a quick exchange. These sparks can't be scheduled. They demand to exist in the moment.I read Notes more than newsletters.
Inboxes get crowded. A quick Note stands a better chance of being read on the go than a 900-word deep dive.I miss long form.
My longer pieces often don’t feel like traditional newsletters. They can be too short for essays, too long for Notes.
They’d be perfect for Medium, except (let’s be honest) who still reads Medium?Writing is a muscle.
Even if it comes naturally, it needs regular practice: space, rhythm, intention. Muscle memory alone won't take you far. You need to make time to write. Even if you don't feel like publishing it, yet. Without conscious effort, creativity loses every battle against life's pressure.Coming back after dropping off? Painful.
Even if you’ve done it before, there is no guarantee you'll do it again.
Stepping away is easy, almost invisible. Coming back is the hard work. Because let’s be real: nobody truly notices if you vanish. It’s up to you alone to come back.
Conclusion: The Beautiful Failure
As the May calendar turns its last page, I'm here to acknowledge something:
I failed my “disappear for a month” experiment.
But that failure pulled me back in.
And if I hadn’t posted that Note from a broken car in a perfect vineyard, I might have missed the last wagon of the Kaleidoscope project train in May.
Not to mention a month of new connections and thoughtful interactions with fellow substackers.
Turns out, there is life on Substack without newsletters.
But it feels like misusing the platform.
Then again, maybe that's exactly the point of experiments:
You follow the idea.
You break the rules.
You find your way back, reshaped.
Am I back to my weekly newsletter?
I honestly don't know.
But June will help me find out.
Life happens, you roll with it, like you rolled into the vineyard.
Your experiment failed, or did it? If you learned something, it didn't fail you got data to learn from and came back different, better, until your next experiment, you don't have to stop just because May is over!
This moved me deeply, Arya. The way you allowed the “failure” to lead you back—not through force, but through listening—is the very essence of creative living. I’ve felt this too… that quiet ache of burnout, the desire to vanish, to see if anyone would notice. And sometimes they don’t—but what matters is we notice. We return to ourselves. Your vineyard moment feels like a sacred detour, a reminder that expression doesn’t have to be loud to be necessary. Thank you for letting us witness your reshaping. You're not alone in this beautiful mess.