3 years on
Some thoughts on this newsletter's journey so far.
For as long as I remember, words have always been how I've wrestled with life.
When I was still in school, this meant that I asked a lot of questions, many of which got me in trouble.
"Why do I need to listen to you just because you are a teacher? How come only one classmate got punished even though two of them were fighting? Why do I need to answer the exam question this way?"
And later on: "Why are we studying so hard? What's the point of all this? Where do we go when we die?"
I got very used to adults telling me, "Don't talk back. You don't need to know. It's not important. Stop asking so many questions."
Later on, there was Twitter, Blogspot, and LiveJournal, back when social media still meant you were allowed to stare into the abyss, wrangle some html, and proceed to bleed raw, naive teenage angst onto online diary entries. And it felt safe to do so because we all had an unspoken agreement that this was perfectly normal, we would never talk about it in public, and there would be no consequences.
At some point, words became how I made money. I started freelancing as soon as I finished National Service, and I learnt that words were not just for telling the truth, but also for manipulating it.
Then in 2016, following a series of unexpected events, Rice Media happened.
When I started this newsletter at the end of 2020, it was a project that emerged out of a deep creative restlessness. While I was entering my fourth year at Rice Media, most of the last 3 had been spent managing people and running the organisation. It felt like forever since I had written and published something that truly felt like my own.
I was also tired, jaded, and stuck. I needed that jolt of activation energy that would help me glimpse what was still possible. Today, I believe that if I hadn't started this newsletter, I would not have found the courage to eventually take a break and explore the next thing.
In any case, I started writing this because I wanted to document the lessons I had learnt managing others and myself. At the time, everything I read centered around self-development, productivity, and leadership. And everything that couldn't be applied and experimented with at work turned into thoughts that needed a home.
Since then, much of this newsletter's direction has mirrored my journey to align my inner world with my exterior life (and vice versa). While I've written in fits and starts over the last 3 years, I've noticed my writing orienting towards what I now think of as 'the space between'.
The space between want and need, thought and action, aspirations and compromise, truth and imagination, desire and peace. The space between "I know" and "I can't". The space between us—whether we are friends, colleagues, family, or strangers.
At one point, I wondered whether I should just focus on writing about management practices and productivity hacks. But whenever I've tried to—and bearing in mind that I wanted to do so in a way that made sense to me—I've ended up realising that things are just not that simple. There was always still something missing, and I saw it not just in myself but in everyone else around me.
Why are some leaders so good at talking but so bad at doing? Why do confident and accomplished people, when placed in certain rooms with certain colleagues, become smaller version of themselves? Why is good communication so easy to understand but so hard to practise? Why are we so miserable even when we’ve gotten all the things we thought we wanted? Why are we the way that we are?
These are questions to which there are no easy answers.
Looking back, I wonder if my appetite for tools and strategies were always just masking a deeper hope that somewhere in all this was the blueprint to getting life to just work.
Many of these topics continue to be interesting to me. Ask me about organisation design, effective storytelling, or the difference between management and leadership, and I can talk passionately for hours.
Yet in a way, they don't get me close enough to what I think I'm trying to figure out, which is essentially: how to be a person in this world. It is a question that has pre-occupied me since I was a kid, and that continues to fascinate and infuriate me even as I get older and life just seems to go on and on and on.
What I'm starting to discover is that often what we lack is not knowledge. It is not tactics or playbooks. Instead, what we lack is humility, acceptance, patience, conviction, honesty, courage, perspective, compassion, identity, freedom.
These are the things that give existence its texture, that make life feel the way it does, that need time to be revealed, and then to be experienced and understood. They are also the things I'm learning, resisting, and befriending.
When I look back now, it seems apt that I named this newsletter Treading Water. I don't know if I fully understood this back in 2020, but at the heart of any kind of change, whether organisational or personal, most of it is really about not fighting, not forcing, not protesting, not grasping, not ignoring, and just staying afloat long enough for things to get better.
This, I think, is what I'm now trying to write about.
All of this is a long-winded way for me to say hi, especially to those of you who subscribed in the last 2 months. I frequently forget that as much as I tell myself I write Treading Water for me, there are people who read this, many of whom I've never actually met. And I think I'm starting to find that balance between valuing this newsletter's audience and keeping it authentic to who I am.
So while I wanted to give some sense of what the current season of this newsletter is starting to look like, this is also a way to hold myself accountable. I've been writing a lot more over the last few weeks, enjoyed myself tremendously while doing so, and would like to keep this momentum going. I have a habit of simultaneously working on several drafts at once, so this is also a good opportunity for me to cultivate some creative discipline.
During this time, some things have become self-evident:
When I am writing, I feel more grounded and in touch with the best version of myself. I make better decisions and I am more present in both my own life and in the lives of the people I care about. I am better at managing my time and energy, and I also have more fun, witnessing the many ridiculous things that I often write and have to later delete when editing.
These things add up to the fact that whenever I'm writing, I'm working on my shit. And when I'm working on my shit, I'm living my life.
As I turn 33 this year, I'm admitting to myself that even up until a year ago, I thought I knew everything there was to know about myself and what lay ahead of me. But as some things have come to a close, others have opened up. I am realising there are many things I have not figured out, and some things I am still afraid to look too closely in the eye.
I've recently come to the conclusion that the entire point of life is to experience it. And as I write about my own journey, it is my hope that those of you reading this will learn to speak to yourselves and navigate your own challenges with the same love and humour that I am trying to cultivate for myself.
As always, I hope to have a ton of fun writing and telling stories through the lens of work, creativity, current events, and so on. Because life is not just about looking inwards but also about how we experience the things around us, I hope to write more about what it means to live, and not just to think and feel.
At the same time, Treading Water is just one part of who I am. I'm looking forward to exploring a wider range of projects this year, and to do more things that feel aligned with my imperfect but unique talents. Some of it might make it to this newsletter, some of it won’t. Believe it or not, I am actually an intensely private person, but this too is a boundary I’m learning to navigate.
What's next
Whether you’re new here or have been reading Treading Water for a while, I would love to get to know you a little bit better. Hit reply, and tell me what you think of my writing, what you would like to see more of, and if there's anything you think I should do differently. Reach out even if you just want to chat, or would like to explore possibly working on something together.
By the time you've received this in your inbox, I would also have turned on paid subscriptions. I’ve taken this step as part of the work I’m doing to have more confidence in my current path and in my strengths, and to acknowledge that there are things I am good at.
This has been surprisingly hard for me, and I reckon is something all solopreneurs will relate to: it is one thing to know you have something to offer, and quite something else to start believing that people will give you money for it.
So for those of you who already pledged, THANK YOU. I am eternally grateful. Because of you, I can now eat for the next 2 months.
For everyone else, do consider a paid subscription if you’ve enjoyed my writing. The only difference being a free or paid subscriber at the moment is access to my achive, but it really does mean a lot to me and keeps me thinking about how to continue building Treading Water.
Otherwise, thank you for being here. It continues to surprise me that people want to read this, and I don’t take it for granted.
See you at the next one 👋🏻