I've Got Some News
This newsletter features monthly musings about life, career, identity, and behaviour by a questioning African centennial. To get it in your inbox every week, subscribe here:
As you must have seen already, things are changing with this newsletter.
This week, I decided to change the newsletter from Arinze’s Weekly to Arinze’s Monthly. It was a difficult decision to make because I’ve enjoyed writing to an audience of about 600+ readers each week. But this was a decision I needed to make.
I must confess, it did confuse me at times to know that people were actually looking forward to what I had to say in my weekly newsletters. I felt a bit like a fraud at first, but I took the advice in this piece, and I trusted your judgement.
Why I’m changing the newsletter
There are three main reasons behind the change that’s happening to this newsletter:
Writing started feeling like a chore
I could feel the quality of my writing fluctuating
I’ve gotten much busier with other stuff
1. Writing started feeling like a chore
When I started this newsletter, I wanted to enjoy writing again. I’d fallen out of love with it since 2017 when I became perfectionistic about it and honestly just lost motivation to write. With this newsletter, I wanted to get back into writing and enjoying it again.
And I succeeded. I really did. But after a while, I started to think of it as that task I have to do on Sunday. Obviously, when I actually started writing each piece, I’d get back to enjoying it. But I wasn’t satisfied with the fact that I no longer looked forward to writing.
When I write, I write with a lot of heart and compassion. The stories I tell about my life and my experiences in each of my pieces mean a lot to me. So when I write about them, I deserve to enjoy the process.
They say ‘distance makes the heart grow fonder,’ right? So I felt that publishing a piece once every four weeks instead of every week would make me more likely to look forward to writing and sharing my stories, thoughts, and ideas with you all. Hence, the change.
2. I could feel the quality of my writing fluctuating
Because the thought of writing each week’s piece felt like a chore, I’d often put it off until the very last few hours. Sometimes, I’d plan to publish at 6 pm only to select a topic at 3 pm. I’ve not gotten to the level where I can put out my best work in just 3 hours.
Because of such a rushed process, the quality of my writing suffered. I published some pieces without even editing them once, and, expectedly, a few diligent readers would point out the spelling and grammatical errors that were littered everywhere.
That was not okay. If I must write at all to you all each week, being lucky to have you spend precious minutes of your time reading my words, I owed it to you to put in more effort into my writing. You shouldn’t have to deal with my writing mishaps.
So I felt that giving myself more time to write each piece would give me no excuse to publish subpar work. Four weeks should be enough time to think, filter, write, edit, and marinate before hitting publish.
3. I’ve gotten much busier with other stuff
This past week, I got appointed to become Managing Editor for one of Africa’s premier LGBTQ+ magazines. It’s an opportunity I’m pretty excited about because it allows me to tell more stories that are related to a community I care deeply about. More news soon.
Also, just yesterday, I joined a new African venture capital firm as a pre-MBA Venture Associate Fellow. Considering my interest in VC, this gig allows me to learn more about VC and the African tech entrepreneurship ecosystem in parallel.
With these new engagements that I’ll be doing alongside my full-time job at Facebook, it’s going to be a lot more impossible to write valuable newsletters every week. So I’m giving myself more time to write without compromising the quality of my newsletters.
So that’s it.
These are the reasons I’m changing to Arinze’s Monthly.
On the last Sunday of each month, I’ll be writing newsletter pieces that touch on life, career, identity, and behaviour. I hope to continue to bring to you high-quality articles that inspire you or, at least, get you thinking.
If there’s anything specific you’d like to see me write about, please reach out to me at heyarinze@gmail.com.
I’d love to hear from you!
Personal Picks
Currently reading 📖
The Mis-education of the Negro – Carter G. Woodson
A song I’ve been playing on repeat this week 🎶
Brand New – Ben Rector
An article that got me thinking 📜
Why Stanford Researchers Tried to Create a ‘Gaydar’ Machine – Heather Murphy
"Brand New" is one of my favorite songs ever. My go to whenever I feel down.
Congratulations on Managing Editor and the fellowship!