Writing this newsletter is HARD…
Some weeks, the words pour out as though I busted my kitchen tap.
Other weeks… nothing.
I open Substack.
See the blank #F5F5F5 background.
Go back to Obsidian.
Stare at the blinking cursor.
Scroll through past notes like they’ll suddenly, on their own, form a sentence.
Unfortunately, they don’t.
Friday arrives fast.
And with it comes a pressure.
To write.
To publish here.
To show up in your inbox.
I wish I could tell you it gets easier.
That consistency becomes muscle memory.
That writing weekly has become some kind of second nature for me.
But truth is… it doesn’t.
Not for me.
At least, not yet.
The Cost of Showing Up
Sometimes the idea arrives early.
Wednesday if I’m lucky.
Then I get 90% of the draft done and use AI to tighten the screws.
Smoothen out the rhythm.
Cut the fluff.
But most times…
Most times I’m dragging myself to the desk on a Friday evening.
After bustling around with 2 kids.
Trying to get them to sleep, so I can come back to my laptop and finish off the article.
With a head full of crumbles of snacks and a heart half-beating with “Do I really have something to say this week?”
This is hard.
Not because I don’t have ideas.
But because consistency has recently become my biggest battle.
A personal confession
Since I moved to the UK, I’ve noticed a pattern.
I start things…
But I struggle to sustain them.
YouTube channel.
Skin care routines.
Journaling.
Evening walks.
They all start well.
Then fade.
One unnecessary thing however stuck — taking photos of the pink tree outside my house.
I’ve taken photos of this tree daily since September last year.
I had no end in mind.
Maybe because I wasn’t sharing them.
There was no audience.
No perfection.
Just presence. Noticing the tree, and its changes.
Documenting it.
No end goal in sight.
And that — That’s what makes this newsletter hard.
Because once something becomes public, it becomes performative.
And when life hits me sideways, like it did since the first week of February, my routines are the first to go off.
The Fluff Machine Called AI
Now let me talk about this thing you think is magic.
AI.
People assume it writes my newsletter.
That I just press a button and boom — ✨content✨
Nah.
What it gives me most times?
Fluff.
Polished.
Shiny.
Soulless.
Boring.
And I hate fluff.
I hate puff.
I hate soulless sentences that sound like they were written for a PowerPoint template.
So I edit.
And edit.
Then edit some more.
Because it has to feel like me before I hit publish.
“An oversupply that satiates us at a cultural level, until we become divorced from the semantic meaning and see only the cheap bones of its structure.”
— Erik Hoel, Welcome to the Semantic Apocalypse
That quote right there?
That’s AI-generated content in a nutshell.
Too much.
Too polished.
Too hollow.
How I Actually Use AI (and why it still makes me mad)
I dump my messy thoughts from Obsidian into ChatGPT or Claude.
Ask it to organize them.
Maybe draft an outline.
Sometimes it surprises me.
Most times… not so much.
When I was working on a book from an old course I created, AI helped me get the bones.
But I still had to stitch the soul back in.
With content, I use AI as a starting point.
Drafting from my notes.
Then refining multiple times over.
But I never hit publish on what it gives me.
I always rewrite.
Always reshape.
Because AI can write the words…
But only I can give them weight.
The Myth of the Perfect Prompt
Everyone is chasing prompt templates.
Swipe files.
“100 ChatGPT prompts that will change your life forever!”
I think… There is no perfect prompt.
Because the best prompt is the one you make yourself.
Prompting isn’t about clever phrasing.
It’s about knowing what you want.
It’s about context.
Constraints.
Clarity.
This is why I created an AI framework I call Prompt Optimizer (or say, Improver).
A way to train ChatGPT (or any AI) to think like me.
To work the way I work.
To reflect my use case, not someone else’s.
You don’t need more prompt packs.
You need a process.
One that starts with:
“What do I want to say, and how do I want it to feel?”
Why I Still Do This
Some days, I ask myself: why bother?
Why show up to write something when I’d rather just… not?
But then…
Someone replies…
Or I get an email that says, “This hit home.”
Or I reread something I wrote and realize — “Wow, I needed to hear that too.”
And so I show up.
Not because it’s easy.
But because it matters.
This newsletter isn’t just content.
It’s a practice.
A mirror.
A memory in motion.
And maybe—
Just maybe—
It’s the one routine I’ll keep even when life shakes me.
Your Turn
Writing is hard.
Using AI doesn't fix that.
But it can help you face it.
So here’s what I want you to sit with:
Questions & Actions
What do you hate most about the writing process, and what might it be teaching you?
If AI could be trained to carry your voice, your quirks, your lens, what would you need to feed it?
Find one AI-generated piece you’ve made this month. How can you make it 10x more you today?
Live courageously,
Dayo Samuel 💯