a messy return to substack

what it really looks like when you take a year long break from publishing

last summer, i accidentally pressed pause on my substack quiet growth chronicles. i thought it would be for a month, maybe a season. instead, a year slipped by. at some point i became convinced i’d never make it back here again. but the truth is, i never stopped thinking about this space. it lingered in the background, tugging at me like an unfinished book i couldn’t bring myself to put back on the shelf.

when i finally started publishing again this summer, it wasn’t the smooth re-entry i’d secretly hoped for. it was messy. instead of my usual bts business updates and lessons, i was writing personal essays. they were raw, unpolished pieces scribbled in the quiet hours after a season of loss and transition. i most likely confused half my readers, and i definitely lost a few subscribers. but that’s what felt true for me to follow in that moment. and what i’m starting to realise is that the creative work worth doing rarely comes from following strategy alone, it comes from trusting those small, insistent tugs of intuition, even when they don’t make sense on paper.

still, it felt awkward. like slipping on a favourite coat from last winter only to realise it doesn’t sit quite right anymore. the words themselves weren’t the problem, they just didn’t feel at home here in this newsletter. i was writing about grief, healing, culture, about loosening the rules we cling to, the messy in between moments of becoming. those pieces felt honest and necessary, but it became clear they needed their own space.

you see, back in spring, i lost my biggest client. and the logical move would have been to replace that lost full-time income right away. send the emails, pitch the projects, and secure something steady. do the sensible thing. but every part of me resisted, and the thought of signing another long-term client made my whole body shudder. i needed air to clear my head, and time to recover physically and emotionally from my miscarriage and ivf. and to be really honest, i needed a break from having my life dictated by the dreaded slack pings.

so when summer came, i didn’t look for new clients. i just wrote. there was no plan, no strategy in sight, just a gentle tug i couldn’t ignore. and the more i wrote, the clearer it became: i needed two different creative outlets. one for the more intimate moments. the late-night thoughts, the grief, the ones that spill out in the quiet hours and belong more to the heart than any handbook: those became my midnight crumbs. and then one for the steadier lessons, the things i’ve learned from a decade of building, breaking, and slowly rebuilding a creative career. that’s what quiet growth chronicles was always meant to be.

and maybe that’s the point. growth doesn’t move in straight lines. most of the time it looks like detours, spirals, false starts, and pauses that last longer than you ever imagined. sometimes it looks like not beginning at all, because something deep inside whispers to wait, even if you can’t quite but your finger on why. but the only way to your eventually find your footing is to take a step, even if it’s clumsy, even if it’s uncertain, even if it leads somewhere unexpected.

i’m starting to see that the seasons where we stop don’t erase our progress. sometimes they are the progress. they’re the hibernation, the underground time when ideas sink deeper and roots ground further. and what looks like silence to the outside world is often reshaping, softening, and preparing for when you finally move again. and the next time you move, it’ll be different. steadier, clearer, softer. the detour, it turns out, is often the doorway.

of course, the business gurus would have us believe something else entirely: that to stop is to die. pause too long and you’ll become irrelevant. slow down and you’ll lose your edge. rest, and someone faster, louder, hungrier will take your place overnight. this is the story the hustle economy sells us on repeat at $997: that our worth is measured by our output, visibility is everything, and if we’re not sprinting, we’re disappearing.

but that isn’t ambition. that’s fear, dressed up as strategy. it’s the myth that growth only matters if it’s visible, and only valuable if it’s constant. it’s a worldview built on anxiety, not creativity. and worse, it’s keeping too many brilliant people stuck on the sidelines, waiting until they feel ready. until they can promise uninterrupted output, waiting until they can guarantee they’ll never falter.

i think the gentle truth is pauses and detours don’t kill our growth. they just give it meaning. they protect our resourcefulness. and besides, a creative life isn’t a racetrack. it’s a landscape of seasons and cycles, where stillness matters just as much as movement.

so going forward quiet growth chronicles will be what it was always meant to be: a library of lessons on gentle ambition and building a quiet business away from the noise. and i hope this explains some of the messiness of these past few months while i found my way back. thank you for sticking with me 🫶🏼

and if you’ve taken a break too, if you’re unsure of what’s next, or hesitant to begin because you can’t see the ending yet, let this be your reminder: you’re not falling behind. you’re simply on a detour.

and detours have a funny way of leading us exactly where we’re meant to be.

—hannah ✿

ps. have you ever taken a pause that ended up moving you forward in ways you didn’t expect?