2023

From Imposterdom to Freedom

Before I get into it, I want to say thank you to my subscribers, and especially those who’ve chosen to support me financially or with other helpful resources, free subscriptions and the like.

My goal is to write full-time so if you get value from my writing and can afford to support me with the price of a sandwich each month, I’d be super grateful.

If you can’t afford to pay anything, don’t worry, the people who are paying enable you to read it for free. That’s what’s so wonderful about the Substack model. Everyone gets a newsletter. I earn an income. It’s a beautiful thing indeed.

I’m usually a deviant so-and-so who does everything he can to avoid doing what everyone else does. But, fuck it, I’ve decided to jump on the year-end-review bandwagon.

It’s a chance to summarise my ten most-read pieces in case you missed any of them.

It’s a chance to reflect on the role that writing has played in transforming my prospects—as well as some exciting developments you can get involved with including creative coaching and a new online course that melds art and business.

Most of all though, it’s a chance to finish the year doing what I love with a simple structure that isn’t too taxing and leaves me with free headspace to see my family and watch The Crown.

In this final post of 2023, you’ll find:

1. My ten most popular essays of the year; and

2. The story of how writing helped me swap imposterdom for freedom.

It’s a longish one (15 mins), so brew some tea and grab some leftover chocolate and I’ll see you in 2024.

Harrison xx

My 10 most popular essays of 2023

I published 32 essays this year. Here are the ten most popular ones, in reverse chronological order:

• Two Types of Writer: Artist and Designer. The challenges and interplay of solving problems for yourself and others.

• Those Three Little Words: When You Know, You Know. They might be the most validating three words we have.

• Outpourings in Paradise: The Four Seasons of Life as a Nomad. Revealing the ragbag emotional rollercoaster of full-time working travel.

• Angels and Monsters: The Unreasonable Advantage of Selfishness. Reflections on the costs of outsized achievement.

• An Education: Misjudgment in the Factory. A true story and a call for a more expansive understanding of intelligence.

• Emotional Niche-Crafting: Specialised Subjects that Refuse to be Boxed In. Are you a creator who struggles to find your niche? Despite what you may’ve heard, you can have your cake and eat it (📣 most popular post).

• Sealed Wisdom: Tearing into Enlightenment. A man is only as big as the things that make him angry.

• Remembering Tom: Pure Conviction Over the Comfort of Compromise. Why I admire my best mate for cutting ties with me.

• A Beautiful Question: The Best Advice Never Given. We have two ears and only one mouth for a reason.

• Sodcasting: Public Nuisance or Social Harmony? “I love it when people play loud music on their phones on the bus,” said no one ever.

🔭 And to give you an idea of what I plan to write about next year, my trusty notes app contains a list of such things as “nice words that hide bad things,” “looking up instead of down,” “Neoteny,” “the wisdom of not doing a job you love,” “conversational chemistry,” “the future of masculinity” and “art school conscription.”

Do you know someone who’d enjoy these topics? You can share this post with them here:

Now, with that, I’d like to share some reflections on 2023—the year I went all-in on writing.

From imposterdom to freedom 

THIS TIME LAST YEAR, I'd just put my failed business behind me. I lost my team, my passion and my purpose.

And it turns out that the life of a digital nomad, as amazing as it is, comes with its own isolation and loneliness. As Corina (my girlfriend) put it, “It can be like lockdown with better scenery.”

To top it off, I suddenly lost my copywriting gig because my boss didn't like me changing time zones so often.

Losing my job was a real low point. But it taught me two valuable lessons:

1. I can live on way less money than I thought; and

2. I have time to experiment and ask new questions like, "What will happen if I take the craft of writing seriously and I’m generous with myself, if I give myself the permission to write?"

Emboldened by this new accidentally imposed freedom, I tried my hand at travel writing. We were in new cities like Seville and Santo Domingo so I went and interviewed business owners and wrote up some restaurant guides.

But the owners were much more interesting than their businesses alone, so the guides quickly turned into profiles of local people. Corina got involved too; she provided all the designs while I did the writing. We made two beautiful books about a mescal producer in Oaxaca and a restaurateur in New York.

Unexpectedly, the guides and book projects revealed something cool: Writing is a highly effective way to cure loneliness.

The moment you approach a stranger with the offer to write about them—to put all the attention on them and create a beautiful artefact about them—all of the social, cultural and geographic boundaries that existed between you melt away.

The moment you publish your ideas online, your words have a way of directing interesting people to your inbox.

Writing is bonding.

After publishing online for a few weeks, I eventually discovered the Write of Passage (WoP) course, which promised to 2X my potential.

I’d taken other writing courses, like Ship 30 for 30, but hadn’t enjoyed them as they were more about turning ideas into listicles to hook people and sell products. I wanted to explore ideas for their own sake and practise the craft of essay-writing within the forcing function of a regular publishing cadence. WoP offered all of the above.

I couldn't afford WoP. But luckily, there were scholarships available, so me and Corina spent an intense couple of days hammering out an application for funding.

A week later, in the middle of the night, I checked my phone again when I got up to pee, read the acceptance email through gunky eyes—read it again more slowly to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating—and then couldn’t get back to sleep because I was so excited! 

WoP has completely changed my approach to writing and supercharged my output.

Writing is now social, not solitary. I come up with my best ideas in conversations with myself and others.

And instead of doing one post a month, I'm doing four or five, which is, when you think about it, a huge uptick in productivity. 50 essays a year rather than 12. Over a twenty-year period, that’s a thousand pieces of work!

I've met loads of other obsessed writing guys and gals too; an ever-present community, constant accountability and relentless pressure—good pressure—to write, write, write and then get praised for my work. That last point is key.

Right now, I'm choosing not to work full-time, protecting my schedule so I can use it to write. I’m writing for about 45 hours a week, sometimes more. I get up early before anybody else and can’t wait to sit at my keyboard and go on long walks to develop my ideas.

Some days I’m like, “Shit! What if this doesn’t work? What will I do? I should probably stop messing around and get a reliable job!” But so far I’ve succeeded in quieting that saboteur.

Hands down my most significant discovery of 2023 is that, without even planning to, I've ended up helping other writers. People are coming to me with questions and ideas they want to explore—and it's the first time I don't have imposter syndrome at work.

When I had my business, I was nervous all the time. Never felt comfortable in my skin. Couldn’t kick the feeling I was reaching for something I didn’t want. I was always trying to protect my lot, scrambling and worrying about how I could get mine.

But whenever I’m writing, that’s all gone!

It's hard to describe what that level of pressure and awkwardness feels like to cast off. Writing involves heavy lifting, for sure, but spiritually I’m gliding on air, enjoying a new suppleness when working with people and ideas.

We recently read a book called Big Magic where author Elizabeth Gilbert talks about ideas as “inorganic life forms” that visit us seeking collaboration. Her point is that nobody owns ideas; they own us. We can choose to work with ideas or not but they’re ultimately fair game.

What I like most about that framing is it’s an unusually generous mindset for art making. Such a far cry from my art school days. In the art world, everybody’s trying to demonstrate that they’re totally unique and solely creditable for their work. They’re not trying to share or collaborate, but hoard ideas, hoard resources and hoard all the kudos.

But WoP and Gilbert have changed my mind. They’ve showed me how that mentality is limiting—and that it’s actually been preventing me from believing I have the ability to help others.

As a writer in conversation with other writers, I've been able to take off my defensive armour and stop to look around, becoming aware of myself as an artist with a new ethos of give-to-get.

Maybe that's a clue, a clue to when you've found the job you really should do: When your ability to help others do it feels natural and enjoyable.

Opportunities are starting to flow my way without much effort from me. I've now got coaching clients and I’m leveraging the written word to develop a new coaching practice.

I’m user-testing prompts for helping people get inspired or unstuck. My goal is to offer these in a short, attractive deck that writers can store on their devices—or they can form the basis for our in-person sessions.

I’m using OpenAI’s latest development—”GPTs”—to train it to tutor me in coaching. It’s designed a curriculum and it asks me questions like a real tutor would so I can do the work and arrive at the insights myself.

Even more exciting: My brilliant mentor from the Royal College of Art, John, has been following my progress and wants to partner with me! We're launching an online course combining art and business—a “reboot”—to help people develop a small venture or creative pursuit.

Places filled up fast. It launches on January 8th. I'm nervous as hell but also buzzing because creativity’s at the core and I know it’s going to make an impact.

I can see the outlines of a new vision—a three-legged stool. One leg is my 1-2-1 coaching. The second leg is the Reboot course. And the third leg is my writing that underpins it, promotes it and informs it.

But it wouldn’t be an honest reflection if I only talked up the good bits.

I’m struggling to spread my work and find new readers because of a petulant refusal to do the hard work of self-promotion.

I’ve been hoping that the work will be enough, that “if I build it, they will come.” But I’m beginning to understand that first-time writers like me probably obsess too much over product when they should be obsessing over distribution.

I’ve got a lot of work to do when it comes to my work-life balance too. The thing about passion is that you tend toward over-investment to the detriment of other parts of your life.

And I’ve got to figure out how to make writing pay my bills without stifling my creativity.

So there’s work to do.

But the doors that slammed shut and the new ones that opened in 2023 have shown me, beyond doubt, that writing is the most rewarding work I've ever done.

The freedom to write whatever, whenever and wherever—the unbridled liberty to solve my own problems and pursue my own nerdy interests—that's just the biggest pay check I could possibly hope for.

There’s the vital social side of writing as I’ve mentioned: the relationships and community that help me feel connected and counted.

The educational income from writing is surely one of the richest. You have a lifetime’s worth of knowledge to discover and learn about. And it’s also the best way to sharpen your thinking and help you claim control of your life.

And then there’s the psychological salary, which is just…wow. The depth of conversation and interestingness of the work, the meaningfulness of the connections and the boost to my self-esteem—it’s all off the charts since committing to the craft of writing.

In the table below, I’ve used these “alternative salaries” to score the three main jobs I’ve had: electrician, founder and writer. And it makes it even clearer why writing feels so right.

Roll on 2024!

Thanks so much for reading and supporting The New Workday in 2023. If you or somebody you know is interested in working with me to foster more creativity, confidence and self-directed projects, then let’s chat. Hit “reply” or send me an email and we can set up a discovery call.

🙋‍♂️

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Thank you to Linart at

Better Meant

, Becky at

Beck At It

, Lavinia at

Lavinia’s Substack

, Mohammad at

Idea & Execution

, Meryl at

Curiosities

, Priya at

Priya's Substack

and Rob at

This Very Moment

for reading drafts of this.