Dear Friend,
Today we celebrate a couple of things. Most importantly, our oldest daughter is celebrating a birthday. We spent the weekend in Seattle celebrating her and it was so wonderful. But also, it is the one year anniversary of LFTR! The letters began officially on March 24, 2023, and the podcast launched shortly after on April 1, 2023. When I think about how I thought the upcoming year would look, I don’t think I could have known where it would take me, take our family.
This project was born out of a need to write, to process. To say something about things that were happening, to share fun stories about my life and travels. It remains that. In some ways it has gone so much better than I ever could have imagined. People consistently read what I write and listen to what we record. Some of them even pay to support us. I don’t think I would have let myself believe I would make any money from this ever, no matter how small the amount.
I am also proud of our consistency. There have been letters every Monday and Friday without fail since the very beginning. There have been podcasts every Sunday. I am a big believer in controlling the things I can, and posting consistently is something I can control. I am proud of the small, but awesome, community we are growing. Of how I have grown as a writer and creative professional over the past year.
In some ways, though, I am a bit frustrated and disappointed with where things are. Our growth has been stagnant for months. If I don’t do much on social media, it seems to really fall off. And I struggle with consistently posting to social media or making content I feel like is additive to the brand. I struggle with wanting to be authentic and balancing that against the need to constantly post something.
Throughout the year, things have changed drastically in our personal lives. The project started tentatively after I was let go from a job while at the beginning of our Baja to Alaska adventure. We now have a home base in the Pacific Northwest and I have a seasonal job at a ski resort. I had never even skied before this season. There’s no telling what the next year will hold.
As I look out over the next year for LFTR, I am excited to see where it will take us. I feel as though we are really only just getting started. I want to pour more effort and resources into growth, while maintaining the small and close community we have started to build. I look forward to trying some new ideas with the podcast and potentially launching some vlog-style YouTube videos. And our new book-club podcast, Library Trolls, is set to launch very soon.
I am not ready to give up on this, yet. It is still too much fun. It still brings me too much joy when anyone reads or listens or comments. I am not yet ready to let that go, I don’t know if I’ll ever be. I hope the next year sees us celebrating some big growth milestones together. But if it doesn’t, that’s okay. I’ll still be here, every Monday and Friday, with these little notes for you, anxiously waiting to see what you think.
See you down the road,
Jamie