Hey Reader!

Jealousy reared its ugly head at me the other day.

I was reading an email from someone I’d lost touch with - a business acquaintance.

She’s done so many interesting things, and seems to have done them all annoying well.

From competing in an unusual sport to becoming an early craft influencer to getting a graduate degree in something that doesn’t sound all that fascinating but then using that degree to work somewhere really cool…

And a bunch of other stuff besides.

Yes, I’m being intentionally vague!

Because it’s embarrassing to admit that I’m very gently stalking her achievements and using that research to find myself wanting. 🙄

Her resumé is catnip to this multipotentiate or, in the words of my mother, person who can’t stick with anything.

Also fuel for that recurrent feeling that I’ve never done anything interesting ever, I don’t know how to do anything well, I’m too old to start having a life worth coveting, fill in the blank.

Just picture mad libs for poor self-esteem.

But that is NOT a place I’m willing to spend a lot of time, so as soon as I realized I was wallowing I looked for evidence to the contrary.

And of course the truth is I’ve done a ton of interesting things, too.

Many of which seem run of the mill to me but make me sound cool to anyone who did not use their college semester abroad to travel to Kenya and study Swahili, or buy a van with a bunch of friends and drive it to Guatemala and back.

And lest you think all my adventures involve leaving the country, here's another cool thing I've done: I'm now offering a short but intensive coaching call, the Email Power Hour.

No airplanes or potentially tricky border crossings, but it's way more useful than eating camarones on the beach in Mexico, and I hope it's nearly as tasty.

It's 60 minutes of deep work on your newsletter. We can talk formatting and structure, storytelling and finding your voice, how to stay consistent, what to write about, how to create a call to action - all the things.

You can write a terrific email every week if that's what you want. I'm here to help.

Hit reply if you want to chat about it.

And if you're feeling like your life is not great fodder for a weekly newsletter, I beg to differ.

I’m guessing you know things that other people will find fascinating, you’ve done things that will surprise your readers, and you are in fact way more interesting than you give yourself credit for.

For heaven’s sake, Emily Dickinson rarely left her bedroom, and after more than a hundred years her insight into humanity is still lauded.

And let’s not forget that writing in a very particular, unfashionable style was the core of her brilliance.

So, no jealousy!

Just keep your chin up and stop worrying about whether someone else is doing your thing better then you. They’re not. Probably. And even if they are? Doesn’t matter!

There are over eight billion of us. There's a slice of that population that is just for looking for you.

xo, Julia

PS - If you think I might be the one for you, sign up for the Email Power Hour. I'd love to help you create a newsletter that builds an audience and helps you sell your stuff!

OVERTHINKING CORNER

Soooo, it’s been a while since you sent an email to your long-suffering audience?

No matter.

You don't have to apologize for ghosting your list, just jump back in and start writing to them. 👻

And PLEASE avoid saying you’re sorry for the break. Assume that most of your readers haven't even noticed that you haven't written to them.

For real.

Are people still doing that thing where they tell you that they're going to be gone from social media for a while, as though you're going to send the cops to do a wellness check because you haven't seen a reel from them in a couple of weeks?

This has always felt to me like the height of arrogance, or maybe just misguided egocentrism.

It's cringe.

In most cases the writer tells us that she "just needs a break". A phone detox. Whatever. I mean, you do you, but please leave me out of it.

There are a lot of reasons not to remind people that you aren't doing as well as you'd like to in an area of your professional life.

An old boss of mine told me that.

Apparently I was blaming my age for being forgetful (hilarious! this was 10 years ago) and she urged me to stop pointing out that my memory was faulty - it wasn't making me look any more capable in the eyes of my team.

It was good advice; we don't have to draw attention to the ways in which we're not achieving what we set out to.

Too bad she then turned on me and made my life miserable for months until I managed to engineer a layoff, but that's another story entirely.

If you feel really awkward about being away for an extended period, try saying something like this:

Or whatever you've been doing lately.

If anyone is out there wondering why they haven't heard from you this is a great time to let them know that you've been doing VERY cool stuff and let them imagine how wildly exciting your life must be.

Maybe you’ll make them jealous enough to write about it in THEIR newsletter.

​T Bone Burnett knows it's never too late, and so does this email.

Forward it to someone who needs a second chance.

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