Beyond the Boring - Here's what I think happened…

Hey Reader,

I hope your 2022 is off to a good start! 😊

It's been 3 weeks since I put CCW on pause, and it's given me some extra breathing room and time to reflect.

Thank you for opting to hear from me while I work things out. If you wish to opt out (without unsubscribing), click here.

There are a few questions I'm trying to answer right now:

• What happened to my motivation?
• What attracted me to online courses and the creator economy in the first place?
• What will it take for me to feel excited and motivated to contribute consistently again?

What happened to my motivation?

As I mentioned in my last email, 2021 was a tough one for me.

I bought a house, getting myself into a huge financial commitment that now, for reasons too personal to share, I need to get out of as soon as possible. It would be perfectly manageable under my full-time freelance dev career, but perhaps a little crippling for someone who's still trying to "figure it out" as a creator.

And, back in September, my Dad died.

My relationship with my Dad was a rocky one and we'd lived thousands of miles apart for years, but still, accepting his death hasn't been easy. On top of that, his passing has left me and my family with a whole bunch of new problems to deal with, all of which could be easier to manage if I maintained my financial stability.

Because of these, I have to prioritise my income and my freelance dev career, with everything else remaining a side hustle for now.

That's only part of the story…

When I started CCW, I had a crystal clear idea of why I was doing it:

I wanted to build a SaaS product—specifically an online course platform—and CCW was a forcing function for me to learn about online courses while building an audience—or "making friends."

I remember the excitement when I decided to start the newsletter. It had fit perfectly into my bigger vision. 👌🏻

Over time I lost interest in building a SaaS product, but I kept writing CCW because I was learning, meeting amazing people like you, and building my brand!

I've reached a point where I feel I've learnt as much as I could from curating and summarising content, and while the other benefits are awesome too, they lack a clear purpose—a bigger vision. I want this to one day replace my full-time income, but I don't have a plan for how I'm going to make that happen yet! 😬

One final problem is curation itself: it's all second-hand knowledge. I'm an expert curator sharing ideas on borrowed credibility.

Borrowing credibility is a great way to start, but it only gets you so far. To go further, you need to build your own credibility.

I need to build my own body of work on a topic that excites me.

I previously hinted at what that topic could be, and I've even taken some steps, but I'm not committing myself to this new path until I've answered the other two questions…

I'm going to leave the other two questions for a future update. I've already started exploring the second one in a Twitter thread:

Why am I interested in online courses, and specifically helping course creators teach more effectively?

Thank you for sticking around while I work through this personal challenge! 😅