When I started Val Thinks four years ago, I had no idea it would kill parts of me I’d deemed essential, integral to my person.
I began this project for one reason: to be consistent in my craft. I wanted the forced accountability—promising my readers a newsletter every Friday—to compel the regularity that for decades eluded me.
This has indeed happened, as expected. What I did not expect, however, is that Val Thinks would leave important casualties in its wake.
To celebrate four years of Val Thinks, let me tell you about the three deaths that have defined this newsletter, and what magic it’s become.
The casualties of Val Thinks
The first casualty of Val Thinks is my writing.
Before I started this newsletter, even a year into it, I thought myself an amazing writer. I’d always been told so—by teachers, by friends, by readers of my deceased blogs. And I believed all of them.
Thus I confidently began my very first newsletter, Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time:
From 2019 to 2020, I was working at a travel tech company. (Hint: the name starts with an A and ends, also, with an A.) I was working in Learning & Development, a field I've dabbled in and out of since graduating.
I read this now and shudder. Can this be any more snooze-inducing? Where’s the hook? What’s *with* the parentheses?
The more newsletters I wrote, the more I realised I had no clue what “good” looked like—never mind “amazing”—and the less confident I became. My writing was, I feared, dying a slow and public death.
The final knell came when I had my first mentoring call with my boss-turned-mentor, a gifted and experienced writer who had, time after time, topped the New York Times bestseller list. “We’re going to make you world-class, Val,” he said, then tore one of my newsletters which I thought was a masterpiece to shreds.
My writing died right then, and in that sixty minutes it was reborn. With each newsletter that followed, with more of his pertinent advice I implemented, the further I strayed from my unlearned ways. And now, almost 200 newsletters later, there remains not a trace of my old, clunky writing.
Val Thinks killed my writing, and I can’t be happier about it.
The second casualty of Val Thinks—and this caught me off guard—was my perfectionism.
For three decades, I had been the consummate perfectionist—and proud of it. I’d credited my every success to my pursuit of perfection, and doubled down: every copy I wrote, every project I launched, every call I led had to be perfect.
And for a while this worked, until I started improving as a writer on Val Thinks and realised perfection was an impossible ideal, forever out of reach. I’d discovered, writing and rewriting my drafts, the sobering truth that, no matter how good I believed something was, it could always be better. Draft six was always going to be better than draft five and never as good as draft eleven.
So I stopped trying to be perfect and instead aimed for “good enough,” where “good enough” might be three newsletter drafts before publishing instead of six, two rewrites of a newsletter ad instead of four, a day to think through a project’s blind spots rather than a week, half an hour to plan a call and not a day.
This death of my perfectionism is the greatest gift from my newsletter. Lifting my self-inflicted pressure to always be perfect has made every burden, work and otherwise, lighter to bear. I’m far saner for it.
The final casualty of Val Thinks is my reason to write.
When I started out, I wrote because I wanted to express myself, articulate my thoughts and feelings and desires, unhide them from the world.
But, four years later, I now know that self-expression, though a worthy reason, isn’t why I write.
A month ago I published a newsletter about how I’ve prioritised my well-being while grieving for a dying parent, and someone I’d met once reached out to say they’re in a similar situation—and how comforting it was to know they’re not alone in the alienating decision to put themselves first.
This is why I write. So one person can read my words and see themselves, feel less alone.
Four years of writing Val Thinks has taught me that, at least for me, writing is connecting. It’s reaching out to dozens, hundreds of strangers with my thoughts and having them reach out in return. It’s becoming pen pals with one of my earliest readers and together laughing and crying over lived stories of mirth and pain.1 It’s asking that stranger with an ailing parent if they’d like to grab a coffee and them saying yes and us both looking forward to it.
It’s not about me, never about me. It’s about all of us living our little human lives separately yet together, joined in happiness and sorrow, connected through these words I wrote that you’re reading every Friday.
It’s nothing short of magical, and I can’t wait for more.
What do you think?
The past four years of Val Thinks have been an indisputable, magical delight. And I now know what I’m in it for. How about you?
Why do you read Val Thinks?
What do you get out of reading this newsletter every Friday? What more, or less, would you like to see? Do you feel the magic as I do? Please hit “reply” or leave a comment—I read every response and I’d love to hear from you. If you want, share this post with someone to pay the magic forward.
Until next Friday… Stay thoughtful, and thank you for making magic with me,
Val
Shout out to Stéphane. I treasure you.
Congratulations on hitting 4 years with your consistency and determination to Val Thinks. Finding reasons why you are in it for is a difficult one. Where most people need to find the answers before going through the journey. But you found yours along the way and the shape of it changes as you go along.
Deep inside, I read Val Thinks because maybe one day I may take a chance on the writer side of me. Plus your reason to connecting one another resonate with me. It's a nice chance each week to be reflective and read another person's perspective.
from your filmmaker friend: This one hits home, not because I've vanquished anything, but rather am struggling with new work, with no idea what exactly it is, where its going, or even why... is this good, or is it time to hang it up & retire? water my plants? I'll start by exploring my own need to be asking these questions. Let go of the perfectionist part, and take a fresh leap! You inspire me with this one! Let us both blunder on!