My Annual Review - 2021
At work I regularly conduct annual reviews for the people I work with. The biggest part of the process is to look at how they performed at work and what they need and want to work on for the coming year.
The most interesting part of the review, however, is seeing the personal growth that people have undergone in the year.
With that in mind I sat down this year and captured the key ingredients for one of the personally most transformative years of my life. Spoiler alert: It is all down to writing online!
Part 1 - Looking back
Back in early 2021 I had a conversation with my coach expressing a desire to fill a gap within me. I could not articulate what that gap was or who could fill it.
It is a strange feeling after all coming from a person who usually is in pursuit of some peace and quiet. A family with five young kids, living in a household of 15 and running a non-profit full-time ought to be enough, right?
On reflection that desire was one of finding a creative outlet for the thoughts swirling in my head.
Coaching course
My job is to lead a company. What we do is providing a vital service for some members of society that need additional support. The way we provide that support is through building and strengthening personal relationships.
So if I want to be the best CEO for a company like that, I must get better at building relationships.
I figured that studying and practicing the tools used by coaches would make me a more empathetic and observational manager. Part of the coaching course was working together with a group of 8 other coaches-in-training and to practice the tools we were studying on ourselves.
A challenge that we posed to ourselves early on was to identify our inner most fear.
After a couple of tries and some days of painful soul-searching I came to the conclusion that my deepest fear was "being worthy".
(In case you are interested I wrote more about it here)
Identifying that fear was part one, but what was I to do with it?
Writing courses
I have always been drawn to writing.
At Uni I got into trouble for not writing analytical enough, I wanted to tell a story rather than describe scientific findings. After my studies I did just that when I wrote a children's book with my friends: Ketoko. However, I then just... stopped.
Somewhere inside me, that soul searching instigated by the coaching curriculum, lead me to search for book writing courses and I found David Perell and Write of Passage.
Since then I have engaged in various writing communities and most importantly: I have met a ton of awesome people from across the globe. Some, I am lucky enough to call friends now.
Part of writing online was to uncover and lay bare some deep held limiting believes. Suffice it to say that writing blog posts and sharing my newsletter has allowed me to finally accept myself and thrive in my roles as a father and company CEO.
Writing online has transformed my life.
It filled the desire that was pulling on my heart last year, although I was not able to articulate it then.
My Niche
I spent 2021 writing on a variety of topics from podcast summaries, to documenting fitness challenges and world-building in a short-story for kids.
The most important aspect of writing online though is to have an audience and to engage with them. And my audience clearly has guided me to embrace the one aspect of my life I felt unqualified to write about:
Being a father.
The reason that I struggled to embrace this is the well-known enemy of most people that write online: imposter syndrome. Who am I to write about that topic? I saw speaking about parenting as a sure-fire way to alienating anyone following my writing journey.
But as was so often the case in 2021, the rescue came from a conversation with a fellow writer. She simply threw back to me that I was the expert of doing the things that I do every day. And so are you, you just need to find a way of being a guide rather than the all-knowing expert.
So for me, my niche is: Fathers that write.
No matter the topic, style or tool that you use. Writing online has transformed me and if I can be a guide to others, show them how I do it and the benefits that this habit can have for them and their families, then all this is worth the time invested in it.
Part 2 - Looking ahead
The outlook for 2022 is very different. It is bright.
On a personal note we will expand our family one more time and end up filling both back rows of our van.
The coming year will also mark the first anniversary of writing online and more importantly, writing consistently. The freedom this blog and my newsletter give me is tremendous. Equally I love reading the weekly digital postcards that my friends from across the globe sent out.
I am now part of a web of online creators who push each other and hold each other accountable.
I have found my niche that is my why for creating online. And more importantly I have found a writing niche that I am super excited to explore!
My Online Writing Goals
When I wrote my magical short-story, I had planned for this to be the first part of a full novel. That idea is not dead, but, after one of these amazing calls with fellow writers, I have changed direction.
What if I were to write loads of short stories, all set in the same universe?
I can give myself the permission to explore different characters, different locations and different times. Then, I can listen to the signal of the readers as to which ones resonate the most and then double down on these.
What are these stories all about?
The underlying message for each story is to address a modern environmental issue.
Blending of traditional Scottish mythical creatures in a low fantasy story setting with modern life.
Storytelling to explore the themes of interconnectedness, balance and hope.
But no annual goal list is complete without some metrics. And you never reach the next level, if you don't set goals that scare you, so here they are:
By the end of 2022, I aiming for the following numbers:
1,000 Twitter followers
300 newsletter subscribers
50 published pieces
The primary focus is the last goal, without consistent publishing, there will be no audience growth. The first two metrics are to be understood as a representation of me providing increasing value to my audience.
2021 has been amazing, thank you to all those who have joined me on this journey and to all those amazing mentors that have shared their insights with me and our communities.
