Hey Reader,

What do you do when you ghost your audience?

Before I tell you what you should do, let me tell you what most people do:

They start with a long winded apology along the lines of, “Heyyyyy guyssss! How are you doing? It’s been SO long, and I’ve missed you guys so much! The reason why I’ve not been posting is…”

And then they go on to explain (in painstaking detail, might I add) why they disappeared, what happened, how sorry they are, and a promise that it’ll never happen again.

Only to ghost us again two weeks later.

But my dear Reader, I’d hold your hand when I say this:

No one cares.

Ouch.

That stung, didn’t it? Yeah, I felt it too.

Actually, let me rephrase that: People don’t care as much about why you were gone as they care about the fact that you’re back.

In simpler words, they care more about the fact that you are back than the reason why you were gone.

I’ve realized that a lot of times, the reason why it’s so hard for creators to come back after taking a break (especially when it’s unplanned) is because we want to come back with a BANG.

You know, with the super profound life lesson or the “Here are 5 things I learned while I was off social media” post.

We want to compensate our audience for the time we were away, and prove that our absence was worth it.

But honestly, no one cares. At least not as much as you think they do.

No one is lying awake by 2:47am because you didn’t post a Substack newsletter. No one is crying themselves to sleep because you stopped on Day 14 of your 30-days-of-posting-consistently-on-Instagram challenge.

In fact, many people won’t even notice you’re gone. Then they’ll see your post and think, “Oh, it’s been a while since I saw this person on my feed.”

And then they’ll keep scrolling.

(Not saying it’s bad, btw. I do it myself.)

What I’m trying to say is, when you take a break, just continue from where you left off. There’s no need to make it harder than that.

You don’t need to manufacture a motivational (read: aspire to perspire) story about where you’ve been and all the deep lessons you learned while you were away.

Of course, if you do have lessons, please share. But there aren’t any deep thoughts for us, that’s fine too.

You don’t need to feel the pressure to create a “banger post” to prove that your time away wasn’t a waste.

Just come back. That’s the most important part.

And well… if it wasn’t obvious already, isn’t this a slightly ironic thing for me to be writing about right now? So meta lol.

Aggressively rooting for you,

Fayo

PS: Before I end this, I think it’s important for me to say that I’m by no means encouraging inconsistency. In fact, I’d say that it’s way better if you don’t lose your streak in the first place.

But if you do, get back up and continue from where you left off.

You have more years ahead of you to get this consistency thing right, okay?

PPS: Not-so-random-fact-that-you-totally-didn’t ask me for: Every time I write my sign-off, I second-guess which one is actually grammatically correct.

Is it “Rooting aggressively for you”, or “Aggressively rooting for you”? Which one do you think sounds better?

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