Midlife MavericksI keep staring at the number.
52.
Fifty-two weeks of showing up to write this newsletter. A full year of commitment I never planned to make.
If you’d asked me in January whether I’d still be here in December, I would’ve laughed and told you I had “proper work” to do.
But something shifted along the way, and it’s the kind of shift that matters more than any revenue target I hit this year.
And I’m not the only one. Hundreds of you have been on this journey with me, building your own habits, finding your own voices, doing the work nobody sees.
From Obligation to Obsession
A year ago, writing felt like homework. I scheduled it like a dentist appointment. Everyone said content was important, so I forced myself to show up.
Now I find myself opening my laptop at 11pm because an idea won’t wait. I sneak away during family dinners to capture a thought. I’ve become the person I used to judge.
The distance between “should” and “want to” is where everything interesting happens. When work stops being obligation and becomes compulsion, you’ve found something real. Not hobby-real. Career-defining real.
That shift doesn’t happen because you set better goals. It happens because you show up long enough for the work to get under your skin.
Quote of the Week
“You don’t find your voice. You build it by using it.”
Austin Kleon
Voice isn’t something you discover in a workshop or download from a template. You earn it by putting words on the page until the uncomfortable ones start feeling true. That’s what this year taught me.
What Consistency Actually Looks Like
Everyone talks about building habits, but nobody tells you what happens between starting and arriving.
You begin by performing. Every sentence gets over-edited. You second-guess your ideas and worry about sounding stupid. The work is competent but lifeless. Most people quit here.
Then you hit the mechanical phase. You’ve built the rhythm, but it still feels like going through motions. You show up weekly, hit publish, move on. The quality improves because repetition does that, but you’re not yet obsessed. This stage tests your patience more than your skill.
And then one day you realize the work is writing itself through you. Ideas interrupt your shower. You resent meetings because they steal thinking time. You’ve stopped asking “should I write this?” and started asking “how do I make this sharper?”
Most advice tells you to find your passion. That’s backwards. Passion finds you when you stay consistent long enough to cross over.
What Changed That I Didn’t Expect
Writing publicly pulled me out of my finance bubble and connected me with operators, founders, and thinkers I’d never have met otherwise. My thinking got sharper because I was finally exposed to different frameworks and challenges. One industry makes you predictable. Multiple perspectives make you valuable.
I used to have vague opinions about things. Now I have positions I can defend. Writing forces you to commit to an idea and follow it to its logical end. That clarity shows up everywhere: client calls, strategy decisions, difficult conversations.
Last Friday, one of my investors told me what I’m doing is “a public service” for women who want to start businesses but don’t think they’re brave enough. I wasn’t trying to build that. But showing up consistently created something bigger than I planned.
Your Move
If you’re performing because you think you should, stop. Life’s too short for that crap.
But if you’re showing up consistently and it still feels mechanical, don’t quit. You’re closer than you think. The shift from mechanical to magnetic happens in week 30, or week 45, or week 52. You don’t see it coming, and then suddenly it’s there.
And if you’ve been sitting on the sidelines, reading but not writing?
Start.
You think you have nothing interesting to say. You’re wrong.
You think your industry is too boring, your life too normal, your insights too obvious. Also wrong.
The women who need to hear from you are one step behind where you are right now. They need to know what you figured out last month, last quarter, last year. Your “obvious” is someone else’s rocket science.
Writing online isn’t about performing to be the smartest person in the room. The value is in saying what you genuinely think instead of what you think you should.
This newsletter started as an experiment. It became the most important business decision I made this year. It taught me what happens when you stop performing and start creating. That lesson is worth more than any course I could take.
So do it on your terms, but do it. The upside is bigger than you think.
Thank you for reading, replying, and thinking alongside me this year.
This only works because you’re here.
We are the women who left the golden handcuffs behind. Who choose building over climbing. Who’d rather bet on ourselves than wait for permission.
We don’t do it the way we were told. We’re tired of being told what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.
We do it scared, we do it messy, we do it real. We show up when the going gets tough, when we feel the entire universe is conspiring against us.
We are mavericks. You belong here.
So whatever you are celebrating this week – Christmas, Hanukkah or something else entirely – I hope it’s full of the people who matter.
Claudia
