Howdy Reader! Yesterday I mentioned that my downfall was TikTok. Scrolling on TikTok was the start of a wasted evening. So I uninstalled TikTok on my phone to prevent me from taking that road at least. Well, good news: tonight was a bit more productive. I wouldn't say that I got a lot more done, but there was more quality time. I was more present in the time after dinner, rather than scrolling on TikTok. And afterwards, when I went to work, I got started earlier. So not a home run, but I...
2 days ago • 1 min read
Howdy Reader! I saw when and where my downfall happened tonight. That time and place when my productivity went out the window. I came home with such good intentions. I had made a list of things to do so I'd be better prepared for tomorrow morning. Boiled some eggs Got the coffee maker ready Cleaned out my lunch bag of the containers I brought into work today Prepared some rice for my leftover stir-fry Tomorrow morning's going to be easy to get ready. Then I opened up TikTok on my phone after...
3 days ago • 1 min read
Howdy Reader! If you're on a creator journey, it's a great thing. Having written, recorded, and so forth for 20+ years, I've learned a couple of things about progress. First: Do the work. There is no other trick. Second: Don't stop for any substantial length of time. It's doubly hard to get started again. After a break, old habits set in and take root. It makes the journey harder for no good reason. Sure, there are reasons for stopping that may be out of your control. But it's far better to...
4 days ago • 1 min read
Howdy Reader! This is a random idea. Happens once in a while. We went out with friends, had dinner, and then the guys and ladies did different stuff for the rest of the evening. They're friends from church, so we talked about "men's fellowship" activities. Right now the main activity for the guys is to get up really early on a Saturday morning, lift heavy things, and generally suffer physically together. That seems to be a common thread from what I hear. Not really my thing. I have trouble...
6 days ago • 1 min read
Howdy Reader! I watched a video on blogging in 2025 on YouTube. Not surprisingly, the speaker talked about how to use AI effectively. He fed his entire blog content to ChatGPT for it to analyze. He did this by installing a plugin that prints the contents to a single PDF. I broke down and got a ChatGPT Plus subscription, and did the same for my blog. The PDF was 3,042 pages long. Twenty-plus years of writing off and on amounted to that much. Doing things with some consistency adds up. It adds...
7 days ago • 1 min read
Howdy Reader! Simple question for you today ... What help do you need with your creative journey? Hit reply and let me know! ~ John When you're up for it, here are some other ways I can help you: Follow me on Threads and tag me there with a question about building your online presence Check out my other writing on my blog or on Medium Learn from my current side hustle challenges on Substack Note: Some links in this email may be affiliate links, and I may earn a commission at no additional...
8 days ago • 1 min read
Howdy Reader! A travel blogger I know had this gem talking about how he approaches writing newsletters for others. From his post on LinkedIn: Most people think ghostwriting is about pretending to be someone else. It’s not. It’s about helping people sound more like themselves. ~ Kevin Payne, Family Money Adventure If he's helping others sound more like themselves, it must be a good thing, right? Your own voice and your own stories are your secret sauce. AI can't faithfully reproduce it. People...
9 days ago • 1 min read
Howdy Reader! In my last email, I talk about how I helped my wife back up her Threads posts. She had good reason for typing them directly into the Threads interface. She wanted to format the posts for length and the like. My suggestion of typing them in a Word document first wouldn't really work for that. But she did agree to save them off in a document going forward, so I count that as a win. 😁 I do things a bit differently. When I write a post, it goes into Obsidian first. It goes there...
10 days ago • 1 min read
Howdy Reader! I helped my wife back up her Threads posts. For a few weeks, she's posted very nice information about historical books. Lots of likes and interactions, and she also broke 100 followers. But all of the work was put directly on Threads. This makes them vulnerable. If they suspend her account, they're gone. (Not that we have any reason to think they would, but who knows?) So I tried to use the data export tool. It was less than helpful. Every individual post and comment was lumped...
11 days ago • 1 min read