A bit more than a week has passed since I closed my first pop-up newsletter dedicated to my Vietnam wanderings.

The goal of the pop-up newsletter was to immerse subscribers in my experience while it was unfolding — letting them walk in my shoes through my words and my photos, on a daily basis.

Now that I’m back home and my whole self is aligned with the timezone again, I think it’s a good moment to sit down and reflect on how it went.

I’ve really never published on a fixed schedule. And this time, I set myself up to do it daily: 0 to 100.

I decided to send out the missives in the evening, when I was back in my room and most of the subscribers were closing their workday.

While the first few days went quite smoothly, in the long run it required a lot of commitment to send the missives out. The days were long — I was walking all day — and, as the people who followed along know, I was sweating my soul out from the heat. Some days I lingered longer in the streets — I’m a night person, after all — and fought with Hypnos to avoid falling asleep on the keyboard.

Luckily, I’m stubborn, and I managed to stick to the schedule even when I was boarding in Seoul, while Asiana Airlines staff were calling me because I was the last passenger to board — still finishing and sending the second-to-last missive.

Taking notes during the day or snapping quick photos of scenes I particularly loved made my life easier at the end of the day. I didn’t have to start with a blank page.

The newsletter wasn’t meant to be a report of my day. It was an immersive experience. And sometimes I had to cut out paragraphs or photos I really liked.

I’ve already written about killing your darlings in the past, but this time the schedule didn’t allow for much lingering and pressured me to make fast decisions without overthinking.

I’m looking forward to seeing some of those left-out parts find a new physical life on the pages of the next issue of Wandering Through Life.

I think this strict schedule affected my experience in the sense that I didn’t fully live the nights.

I thought about taking a “day off” more than once, but in the end, the willingness to stick with the commitment luckily won out.

I’m glad it did—because I came back with the most genuine record of my experience, which will be the solid foundation of the magazine/book. I also gained confidence in my writing, and in this new way of sharing my experiences through words and photos.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that you can reply to any newsletter — or click the link at the end of this page — and reach me directly in my inbox. And that’s exactly what a few readers were doing during the trip.

Reading what people felt while reading the missives was so heartwarming and motivating. It created a new layer of connection to the whole experience.

This first pop-up newsletter was a hell of a ride. And I’m grateful to all the people who tagged along, took the time to reach out, and to those who are still enjoying the missives even after the trip ended.

As I mentioned, I’ll now start working on the new issue of Wandering Through Life. There’s a pop-up newsletter coming that will cover the entire journey between now and its release.

Lastly, there was a spin-off at the end of the trip — but I’ll write about that another time.

Till then,
– M