Soul Letter #8
To🥂 Small Wins, Soul Letter turns 100, A Big Announcement, And Remembering A Friend
Hi 👋, Shubham here.
I am back with another fun dose of Soul Letter🗞
Let’s begin.
What our subscribers are saying?🤔
Love my promotions inbox now!
Reposting your soul letter, I like this one a lot:)
Mast hai yeh!
It's good stuff
Very well written
You Guys!🥺
In the previous newsletter, I lamented about the low numbers. I also moaned about the low engagement rate and other flimsy stats.
After reading it, readers messaged me suggesting not to fall into the number trap. A few posted status updates and messaged their friends asking them to sign up for Soul Letter.
If I remember correctly the subscriber count was close to 150 when the last newsletter was published.
The subscriber count has risen to 189 🔥, Thank You, GUYS! ♥
I can’t guarantee I won’t cry again, but I’ll try my best😅
Small Wins
A couple of months back, I wouldn't have imagined I'll be running a newsletter.
Soul Letter started with a few close ones as an experiment and has crossed the 100 subscribers milestone.
100 isn't much, considering newsletters have thousands of followers.
And that's the point, so often in life, we forget to acknowledge these small wins.
Ya, 1000 subscribers will be amazing, and someday we'll celebrate that too (I hope I am not jinxing it🤞). But for today, 100 subscribers feel incredible.
We set huge goals, which is great. One should have big ambitions.
At the same time, we should embrace these small advancements which lead us to the result.
The minor victories get unnoticed.
In striving for bigger goals, dare to take small sprints. They're usually far from excellent, but they add up to magnificent results.
- Billy Samuel Mwape
Treat yourself with an ice cream🍦 next time you get up early or do an extra pushup.
I am on my way to have one.
100 subscribers baby!!
Open for Submissions
A couple of people pinged me, inquiring whether they can contribute to Soul Letter.
I thought that would be awesome, primarily because writing a biweekly newsletter is turning out to be a tedious task, and it would help us.
Also, Soul Letter will give a platform for many novice writers.
I was contemplating making it open for everyone.
Our proofreaders loved it but argued it might affect the consistency of the newsletter. We may end up conveying conflicting opinions, which may not be ideal.
However, I feel that's fine. We are allowed to have different opinions.
Reading different points of view will help us understand others' perspectives.
I believe there is a writer in each one of us.
The reason I started writing was to document my learning and mistakes which might help others learn from them.
Our subscriber base has young teens who haven't faced the real world (best of luck😏), several 25 years old who are still confused about their careers, a few 40 something who might wanna share tips with our young readers.
We can help each other out.
Therefore you can share any of your learnings, hacks, blogs, videos which might benefit others. You can also ask questions or advice, we’ll put it in the newsletter.
Depending on your personal preference we can either show or hide your name along with your entry.
Newsletter of the people by the people for the people
One thing to note here, your submissions will be assessed by our proofreaders. They will be published if they are deemed good enough and provide genuine value.
We are still not sure how we will be publishing the submissions.
One way is to have a dedicated newsletter created solely from the submissions, while the second option is to have a special submission section in our regular newsletter.
We will make a final call based on the responses.
You can mail your articles at lettercallsoul@gmail.com ✉
Please add “Pitch:” followed by the article title in the subject line.
The Inevitable
A few months back I lost 😥 a college friend to cancer.
When she passed away, it was unanimously decided that she won’t be removed from any groups. She’ll forever be part of our gang.
But life rarely respects our forevers.
Yesterday her WhatsApp number was deactivated, as a result, she was removed from all our groups.
Somewhere deep down we knew it would happen eventually. We were being naive, but there is not much one can do in such situations.
I guess we thought we could preserve a part of her if she remains a member of our group. It was reassuring to see her name on the group members list and acted as proof of all the good memories.
Now on searching her number on Whatsapp, it suggests sending her an invite.
Many readers who knew her are about to tear up like I am while writing this, but I am sure while reading this from heaven our dear friend wouldn’t want this.
She had a child-like innocence and often tried to explain everything which was always amusing.
I am adding an old screenshot for readers to sense her vibe. (While taking the screenshot I never imagined I will sharing it someday.)
She once posted a group photo of a play where she portrayed an angel🧚♀️, I was teasing her by implying she was the one with the monkey🙈 cap :)
Maar khayega 🤜 was her go-to phrase😂
Love ya too Slack
Video Recommendation
An 11-minute short film named ‘Hello, Again’.
Final Words
I know the newsletter turned somewhat somber.
Anyways, looking forward to your submissions (Hope I gave the correct email-id).
If you are into fitness write about health, if you are interested in finance write about the market trends, or if you wanna share anything else please do.
Our school group is planning to have a reunion today for which I am excited. I haven’t met a few of them since school, so that adds up to roughly 4-5 years. Although I have a feeling everyone will bail out at the last moment and it will turn into another unsuccessful Goa plan.
Have a great weekend guys!
Follow us on IG—lettercallsoul. Until next time, Houdoe! 🙋♂️
In case you missed the previous newsletter, check it out.
PS: If anything from today’s letter resonated with you, and you would like to share your views, mail me at lettercallsoul@gmail.com. We might include it in the upcoming letter.