To Speak When You Have Nothing to Say

Reflections on Ezra Writes: past and future

Beginning this newsletter was prompted by watching a YouTube video by the very impressive entrepreneur, Ali Abdaal.

Watching his videos always gives me an impulse to action. He is successful, and his advice is often very sound. Furthermore, I always liked writing, it is a rare creative outlet for me – and the opportunity to put my writing in front of an audience was an appealing one.

So, I started this newsletter back in 2022.

I started releasing the articles – slowly but surely – once a month, if I could. I didn’t really know what I would write about, and I didn’t really have a niche. So, my articles moved from AI to chess, from Italian football to garden fences. I started to develop my style: to try to make it flow, not to shirk the deep topics, to write about exactly what I wanted to write about.

It was this newsletter that accompanied me to Japan. It gave me an outlet to record one of the most memorable periods of my life. It made me keep my eyes open, to notice the glaring cultural differences hidden in plain view – to make a note of those, and to convey them to you at home so that we both might learn something.

The joy came quickly: I weened myself off looking at my Substack analytics (views, shares, subscribers) and just focused on the writing.

But like with all things in life, with the pull comes the push. The biggest challenge for me has been consistency. Sometimes, weeks and months go by – and an interesting idea just hasn’t made itself manifest. I’ve always told myself not to force it: to write only when it feels right.

Recently, for example, I went to Greece, arrived, was busy, and didn’t feel inspired. So, I didn’t write anything after my introductory post.

That felt wrong – a story left incomplete.

But, there is – I think - something valuable in this philosophy: to stay quiet when there is nothing of worth to say.

Let me take you into a very boring place to illustrate this: my email account.

After opening the virtual blue Outlook envelope, let’s take a look at the folder entitled ‘Spanish Newsletters’. Beside it, is the number 171. In other words, there are 171 newsletter articles that I haven’t opened in that folder.

I made that folder with the vision that I would happily spend 10 minutes a day reading a couple of authentic Spanish daily newsletters. But the sheer volume was too much for me to cope. I can’t read all of them, and I don’t have the attention span for it either. So now I don’t read any at all.

A similar phenomenon happens whenever a person talks for too long (as I am in danger of doing here). Whenever that happens, the listeners start to lose focus, they start to look at the cars passing by or to think about what they might have for dinner.

So, going forward I’m going to stick to my guns. At the expense of consistency, I’m going to write only when I have something to say.

Speak then,

Ezra