Dairy of a Creator, January 2025 – Momentum

New Year, new beginnings… Right? That’s what I hope for my creator journey this month- a fresh perspective, a little more ease and a lot more fun.

For the last two months, I have been stressing about making it happen and it only turned out to be counterproductive. So, we are shifting the focus. The theme of this year is PLAY. And I’m going to have as much fun with my work here as possible.

Let’s see what January has in store for us!

January 2, Thursday

Starting the year with my favourite format of creation. Substack newsletter – Starting the year with a mantra, a mindset, and maybe some ink.

January 5, Sunday

The last couple of days were about freelance work. Today was all about pitching. I feel like a little more income would take the pressure of content creation and the obvious choice is to start writing for publications which I have always wanted to do. So, today I sent a pitch (for the first time) to a famous magazine. Then I also applied to work with an interesting organisation on a volunteer basis because their values and ideas match mine so well!

January 6, Monday

The month’s first blog (our target is 4) went live today – Dairy of a Creator, December 2024 – Stagnant. For Instagram, I posted a carousel – A thank you to my short hair.

January 7 & 8

Off days due to other commitments.

January 9, Thursday

Newsletter day! I dared to write in a different format today and it felt good – The walk of remembrance.

January 11, Saturday

Sorting my finances is one of the biggest burdens I’m facing now. So, I’m also starting to focus a little more on the other aspect of the career that I have reserved for the future- writing for magazines/publications. Today was all about reading up on how to do it. If I play it well, it will also add credibility to my creator journey.

January 12, Sunday

Amidst a busy I managed to edit and finalise the 2nd blog piece of the month and from Kalaripayattu. It will go live tomorrow. I also edited most of the next reel, just a couple of clips needed to round it off. Will do that tomorrow.

For pitching to publications, I created a Google Sheet that created a flow for my process and to keep track of the pitches.

January 13, Monday

Change of plans in the blog, I’m yet to get the picture to add to the blog so I’m planning to publish another one first. In the meantime, I managed to edit my next reel for New Road New Skills series today! But I didn’t feel like posting it. Will do it tomorrow.

Today actually was a beautiful day! It was a full moon and I got to do something different today with my fellow female residential students at Kalari which ended up giving me a clearer direction for my career. I will share a post about that also soon.

January 14, Tuesday

I posted the next episode on New Roads New Skills today- How a Kalari residential program can fix your lifestyle.

The response was great! Of course, the reach was the same. But the comments and DMs were more than usual! Yay!!!

January 15, Wednesday

Shared a post on Curiosity of the week – feminine energy. I’m hoping to make this a thing, like a series. Weekly curiosity post. It could actually help me build a habit of trying a new thing every week and also is a piece of content. Win-win.

I also published the next blog today – Falling in Love with Cafes in a Small Kerala Town.

January 16, Thursday

Made a major investment in my creation journey – the iPhone 15! It feels super weird to have such an expensive gadget in my hand. I’m low-key freaking out but I’m ready to make the most of it.

January 17, Friday

Because yesterday was an eventful day for me, today is the newsletter day! And for this week I wrote a piece on What if I don’t want to be great? This one is something I have been thinking about for a while as with every endeavour I take up I feel the need to be great, especially when others point out my potential.

January 18, Saturday

The next blog went live today! And this one is close to my heart – A Peek Into the Gurukulam Way of Life. I’m hoping to share a couple of more stories from my Kalaripayattu training in the blog. Let’s see.

January 23, Thursday

The plan was to post something else on Instagram, but I have been so occupied especially since Sundaram also joined me in the Kalari training. So, I made the last-minute decision to share a reel of Neduvadi Payattu from my display in a small pooja. Got lucky yesterday and found two good-quality portrait footage of this that I could combine while I previously only had a landscape video of it. Happy that it’s getting good traction!!!

Managed to share the newsletter right on time today amidst all the craziness!!! This week’s topic is – What if the stakes were never that high?

January 24, Friday

I think after the longest time I did my first shit posting! Tried to stop myself but I really wanted to share this picture just for the love of it. Wrote a caption about attitude because that is why the picture mattered to me.

January 25, Saturday

We got a Kalaripayattu photoshoot done today! Lots of amazing pics and videos! Would be great for content in the upcoming days.

January 26, Sunday

Today we had the opening program in the new Kalari. I tried to create a reel today but was only able to put together the idea and videos, the script is yet to be finalised.

January 28, Tuesday

Today is the temple festival in the evening. My schedule has been packed for the last few days and I haven’t been able to do anything but work and hang out with people. Since it’s the last days of 3 months of training, I want to be fully present here and spend time with people. So, it’s okay that I’m not creating right now. I’m leaving for Chennai tomorrow and will get back on track soon!

January 30, Thursday

Pitched to a few stays in Bir today for collaboration. It feels like a long shot considering I’m looking to stay in one place for 2 weeks straight. But let’s see.

January 31, Friday

Last day of the month! I’m far from my content piece target. I have fallen short of the newsletter since I couldn’t come up with anything I want to talk about this week. Anyway, I wanted to at least post a reel today but since time didn’t permit, I ended up posting a small carousel of pictures from the Kalaripayattu photoshoot which I had planned to post next week!

I also pitched to more places today in Bir and a couple of them started a conversation! Prepared a content calendar for the next month too.

Messages That Made My Month

As a creator, what brings more happiness than the numbers is when people take time out of their lives to say kind things about your work. Certain face-to-face conversations happened this month which I wish I could screenshot like this and put here so that I can take a look at it when I feel low.

Monthly Reflection of a Creator

Maybe because the numbers are better or because it was a challenging month, I’m rather happy with what I managed to do even though it’s less than the pieces I created last month. That said, I do want to really amp up the posting frequency on Instagram the next month while keeping the newsletter and blogs here consistent.

Overall, a good month!

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