Time To Get Started On Your Thing

A short reminder to begin your project and toot the small horns along the way

Comment at the bottom what you are going to start tonight, tomorrow, this week? GO

On September 13th I made my first post here that said ‘Coming Soon: This is Moral of the Story, a newsletter about Stories.’ It took me over two and a half months, November 29th to make my next post entitled ‘Kevin! What is this?’ even though I still didn't know what it was. I just knew I had to start writing something, I ended that first post with this…

Moral of the Story: The first post is the scariest. Put it out there and get to the next one and then the next one and keep going.

Substack sent me a chart showing the growth of my readership so far. I noticed an uptick in subscribers after I started writing, interesting. Is that the most obvious statement ever? There was nothing to read, so um, why would there be any readers? But isn’t that a fear that holds us all back from starting a thing. No one will buy it, no one will care, I will be another moron who wrote on the internet and no one will read it. Happy to report I have exponentially more subscribers than I ever anticipated. And happy to report, I am still nervous and insecure about every piece I have published or am working on right now. Well, Kevin, too bad, I am going to keep putting them out. I have more subscribers than I ever anticipated for 2 very simple reasons.

1. I only ever anticipated having 3 subscribers. Mom, Dad and Cory Cavin.

2. I started actually writing.

I now know just a little bit more about what I am doing on here, from doing it. I am writing essays about things I find funny and interesting. And I record each one of them because it helps me write in my voice and I enjoy performing them and some people enjoy listening rather than reading. I am trying to give people 10-20 minutes of funny interesting essays each week. Here are my 3 favourite pieces so far, along with a little victory associated with it and I invite you to check them out if you haven’t. You can read or listen to all of them.

• I wrote The Greatest Living Comedian to try to introduce some people to an unknown but brilliant influential comedian. Jason Zinoman a Critic at Large at the New York Times read the piece, retweeted it and said ‘Your intro is a real service’. When I published it I thought it was weird to write fawningly about a fellow comedian but I love his work and I had to publish it to fulfill my self imposed writing goal and deadline for the week. (10 minute listen)

• I wrote a piece combining 3 ideas a commercial, a football game and my motorcycle getting stolen entitled: How to Ensure Your 2023 Goes According To Plan. It received 5 likes, 6 comments and I received 10 emails and texts about people who were affected by it in some way. When I published it I didn't know if it made any sense. (11 minute listen)

• I wrote a piece called The Dark Prejudice Against Kevin’s In Paris. It’s breaks down a New Yorker article about a true phenomenon about the dislike for the name Kevin in France. I received my biggest bump in subscribers based on people who discovered the article via instagram. I didn’t know if it was funny or interesting when I published it. I got the most messages about this article, all people saying it was funny and interesting. (7 Minute listen).

  

I am currently work on 2 pieces both of which I am very scared to publish. One because it is incredibly personal and the other because it may be considered ‘controversial' by some. But I will put those out over the next few weeks and I look forward to seeing how different my pre-publish perception is to my post published reality.

The Moral of the Story: Take a look at this graph and know that it applies to whatever thing you are afraid to start as well