The most consistent thing in my life
Celebrating 300 weeks of showing up(!)
Hello fellow learn-it-all 👋 Greetings from Detroit, Michigan. This week’s letter is a celebratory one after hitting a milestone that feels like one of the prouder ones in my life. I’d love to ask you a favor to fill out this 2min short survey to support the direction of my publication. :)
Now, let’s fly into letter 300 from a learn-it-all. Enjoy!
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This is the most consistent thing in my life.
In the past six years, I’ve traversed oceans across the globe to move four times, from Chicago to Hawaii to Thailand to the Netherlands and back to Detroit (for now); I’ve shifted friend groups umteen times; my employment has evolved from management consulting to teaching English to chicken sitting. I’ve experimented with and tinkered with at least 50 rituals, from cold showers to dancing, and this little thing right here, that you’re reading, THIS has been the most consistent thing in my life.
This is my 300th weekly letter.
These are completely self-designed creations each week. Nobody asked me to do this. There’s no curriculum, no external accountability, no grade at the end. Just little ol’ me, deciding every single week to show up and share something.
My letters are a downstream creation of my sevenish years of daily journaling. By putting pen to paper each day, most days, twice a day, I notice ideas. And then I swim in the sea of surplus and select what to consume from others. From there, the ideas have sex, and I create my hodgepodge of a letter full of things that tickled my fancy that week.
What These Letters Have Been
There’s a line from a 1998 movie called You’ve Got Mail where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan fall in love over email:
“The odd thing about this form of communication is that you’re more likely to talk about nothing than something. But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings.”
That’s what these 300 letters have been. A lot of nothing that became everything.
These letters have been life-giving.
They’ve served me as a vehicle for reflection and to reinforce my values of curiosity, courage, creativity, and connection. When I press that daunting blue button each week to “publish,” I combat against my impostor syndrome that whispers in my ear that I’m not a writer or a risk taker. A true woman in the arena could spark a new idea or inspire you to pause a moment to zoom out or turn the bulb on in your lighthouse to invite others in, and I want to continue to do so.
But lately, it doesn’t feel like enough. It doesn’t feel like I’m being courageous and this is creating tension. This creative practice is no longer satisfying me. I feel a call to explore and venture into a new frontier.
Let me back up a step before I press on…
The Cheesecake Factory Problem
When someone asks me, “what do you write about?” I fumble with my words because it’s like my writing is a Cheesecake Factory. If you’ve never been, it’s an American chain that’s known for its dessert. (not really that good cheesecake in my opinion). But the thing is that nobody goes out to dinner just for cheesecake. So then once you get seated and handed a bible-sized book made of a smorgasbord of options from Italian to Mexican to steak or fish. You can choose any adventure you’d like. What freedom right?!
…until you notice that you want to get known for a thing to build a reputation off of. What you get is average or subpar at best. And for me, I don’t want to settle for that.
A few months ago, I was a top rising writer on this Substack platform for philosophy for about 24 hours.
It was exhilarating. I loved the idea of being known but there’s no edge. It’s vanilla. What’s memorable about that? I was voted most memorable in high school, and I think it was because my tweet went viral on the news after I saw Ryan Gosling at the local Starbucks in small town Michigan. And I want to get that edge back again.
I’m tired of being a Cheesecake Factory.
I want to be known for something.
Not to be famous. But because I want you to trust me. I want you to think of me when you’re wrestling with a specific question or need a particular kind of perspective. I want to build a reputation that means something more than “she writes nice things sometimes.”
And I want my writing to feel useful, so that if I could ever make money from it, it would genuinely solve problems and create value. I don’t want to just be something that can be doomscrolled. Attention is the hottest commodity in this age of infinite information.
The truth is, I’ve been hovering over the “schedule” button longer these past few weeks. I’ve rewritten opening lines four, five, six times. I’ve left my laptop open on the couch and paced to the kitchen to refill my water glass even though it’s still half full. These letters used to flow. Now I’m second-guessing.
What I'm Asking For
I don’t know what that thing is yet. And that’s the scary part—I’m so close to my own work that I can’t see what thread runs through it all. Maybe you can see it better than I can. Here’s a short survey I’d love you to fill out.
My new intention to be known for a single thing creates tension between the wholesomeness of this practice and the challenge of making it sustainable.
In the meantime, as I explore this tension, I’m excited about the next 300 letters and about keeping up my creative writing practice. This is the most consistent thing in my life, and I’m ready to keep going and see where it can take me.
Swimming in Deeper Water
I started swimming most weeks of my life when I was seven years old. That was just about 23 years ago. But here’s the thing: I learned in a pool. Lanes and chlorine and my dad as the lifeguard on duty. It was safe. Predictable.
These past six years of letters? I’ve been swimming in a pool too. Publishing, yes. Showing up, yes. But staying safe in the shallow end where I know I can touch the bottom.
The ocean’s different. There are waves that could pull you under. Invisible currents you can’t see tugging. So now the risk is about what happens when I venture past the shallows into deeper water.
That’s what I’m ready for now. Not just consistency. Depth.
🌟Quote to inspire
“The most difficult decision is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.”
— Amelia Earhart
📸Photos of the Week
I could dedicate a whole entire letter to how inspired I feel from all the interesting people I met while in NYC during the past week or so. <3
🙏Shoutouts
To Michael Dean who I met up with in Queens and wrote the first draft of this piece followed by such clarifying feedback on finding my shiny dime for the piece and how I wrote from conversaation to make the opening hook
To Steven Foster for further feedback and mailing me some of the best paper quality I’ll ever written on. Thank you friend!!
Such an epic and fun reading festival hosted by Ben Bradbury
To meetups with pathless friends Caitlyn Lubas and India Witkin
To the curiosity and connection I felt at James Q’s Olive Tree Writing Club. And meeting kai !
To my other friends not on Substack including Ben, Em, Alex,
A fun collage journaling night hosted by Emily Chertow
I am grateful you chose to fill part of your day here.
If something in this letter resonated, press the ❤️ , leave a comment, reply to this email, or reach me at vermetJL@gmail.com. I love hearing from you.
Keep on learning 😁
Tot snel 🌺 🌺
Toodles :)
Jen
P.S. #1 - I wrote a book. Letters to My Life is my favorite way to share my writing with you (and it keeps your screen-time stats down). Grab your copy here.
P.S. #2 - Here’s what you missed. Last week I wrote about January 2026 notes, film and questions & jaywalking meanderings in the first month observed
The survey wouldn't let me sign in for some reason. Your writing is always so positive, I'd personally love to hear more about what kind of change you want to see in the world, like what makes you mad, what problems you'd like to solve. I guess, in short, what I'd love to see you focusing on and writing about is what really matters most to you rather than something that matters to me. I enjoy witnessing the deep passion and commitment of others to anything.
Thanks for being so honest, Jen. I laughed out loud a few times while reading this. I genuinely enjoy your writing and get a lot out of it every week. You have a great eye for noticing things and offering interesting perspectives. Funny enough, some of your recent articles have even inspired a few of mine (but maybe that is because I’m just a Cheesecake Factory person… I’ve never been, but I do watch mukbangs and some of their food looks kind of good actually😄).
You’re definitely adding value. And at the same time, it really matters that you feel fulfilled by what you’re writing and those feelings sound like a nudge to change things up a bit. Huge congrats on being so consistent, and onto the next 300, however that will look like💛