🌟AIP 100 How Writing Changed My Life (Celebrating 100 Newsletter Editions)
Four years ago during Quarantine, I was a kid lost in Minecraft worlds, using games to escape a reality I wasn't sure how to navigate. I'd spend hungry nights in restrictive eating and endless scrolling of fitness influencers who seemed to have it all figured out.
The thought of sharing my thoughts with thousands of people? That would have sent me running back to my pixelated shelter.
My past self would be awestruck looking at me now. This newsletter marks almost four years of consistent writing, which has hands down been the largest contributor to my growth as a person. It wouldn’t be possible without you.
In this newsletter, I wanted to reflect on my creation journey through five major inflection points—the beginnings, the aspirations to become a full-time creator, and the surprising insight I'm coming to in my journey now—as well as share some of my learnings along the way.
I hope you enjoy 🍻.
Inflection Point One: Starting The YouTube Channel
You newsletter readers might not realize this, but my creator journey began with a camera and a crisis.
March 2021. Peak quarantine. I spent my nights in two places: playing video games or hunched over my phone, watching fitness influencers promise that six-pack abs would fix everything. Then, one night at dinner (the few bites I allowed myself), my mom commented offhand about how I'd make a humorous fitnesstuber.
Looking back I sometimes laugh when I think how different my life could be had she not made that comment.
The next morning I stole--ahem, borrowed--my dads $2,500 Blackmagic Camera and recorded and spent 40 hours editing the incredibly innovative and influential: Day In The Life Aidan Helfant.
Yaaaaaaaaa, I've come a long way since then. I mean, my grandma could make a better thumbnail than that. But we all have to start creating somewhere.
The truth about those first YouTube videos?
They weren't really about fitness at all. They were about feeling in control during a time when everything felt chaotic. Each night I'd lie in bed, stomach growling from another day of restrictive eating, and wonder if tomorrow I would level up myself instead of some Minecraft sword.
Creation was sustenance for my soul.
That $2,500 Blackmagic Camera became more than equipment–it became a lifeline. A reason to get up, to put on real clothes, to speak to someone (even if it was just a lens). During those short moments of creation, Covid disappeared and I was simply a teenager chasing his dreams.
Inflection Point Two: Taking The Part Time YouTuber Academy
But of course as humans do, doing something isn't enough. I needed to learn to do it well.
Skip to fall 2021 and I come home for my fall break first year at Cornell to discover The Part Time YouTuber Academy (PTYA) created by Ali Abdaal is happening that next week. Me being 19 and naive, I imagine a life of passive income, freedom, and infinite full body massages. So, for that week I work my ass off A.K.A. beg my parents to buy it for me. Like the angels they are (and have been during my whole creator journey), they help me get it because they notice how much this whole creative thing tickles my buttons.
When I begged my parents to help me buy that course, it wasn't really about learning to make better thumbnails. It was about legitimacy. About finally having permission to say "I'm a creator" without feeling like an imposter--especially at Cornell where some students created and sold their first business before exiting the womb.
So for December of 2021, by day I'm taking a full course load of Cornell classes, handling relationships, and clubs. But by night, I take the PTYA and learn about creating thumbnails, niching down, and outsourcing. I was Cornell's friendly YouTube spiderman.
The PTYA made me realize that my videos were--what's the scientific term? Shit.
Go back through my YouTube history, and like a teenager's acne after they hit college, you can easily spot the "Pre-PTYA" and "Post-PTYA eras:"
The PTYA changed everything about how I handled YouTube. I niched down into strictly talking about reading content. I made my thumbnails, "better" (it's all relative). I outsourced video editing to my editor Dan--still my video editor to this day!
I improved more in that month than I did in all the previous eight months combined. It doesn't matter how long you have done something. It matters how long you have done something with continual iteration. For the last eight months I had been creating, but I hadn't been iterating.
But most importantly I began referring to myself when asked in conversation, "what do you do?" as a "Creator." I felt slightly less doubt when someone told me about their triple major in engineering, mathematics, and missed college memories. Should I be doing more? No, creating was for me.
Inflection Point Three: Creating The Newsletter
The PTYA taught me how to create better videos. But another thing it did, was teach me how to make creation a business. Which is why I started my newsletter.
A major point made in the course was how an email sub is the most valuable thing you can get. Unlike YouTube, you OWN email, and can have direct correspondence with your audience. So, on May 31st of 2022, I sent my first newsletter edition ever, to a whopping 54 subscribers.
Back then it wasn't called "Aidan's Infinite Play" but rather "The Learning Logistic." I believe my thinking was my newsletter would help people learn the principles behind how to learn more effectively through notetaking, reading, and more.
Stupid name. "The Learning Logistic." Yes, that's exactly what I want to read when I sign up for a newsletter, logistics! (Thankfully I changed it to Aidan's Infinite Play a few months later).
But back, then, those first 54 subscribers weren't just numbers – they were my friends and family. Each one was someone who knew the real me, who'd seen me grow up, stumble, and keep going. The name "The Learning Logistic" was probably my way of hiding behind academia, of making something deeply personal sound professionally detached. Because isn't that what we do when we're scared?
We dress our dreams in serious clothes.
Much to my dismay after a few months of writing and creating videos post PTYA and I still don't have enough money to jump into my own gold pool like Scrooge McDuck--Bummer. So I decide, it's time to go all in.
Inflection Point Four: Creating The Podcast And Niching Down
Cut to November of 2022, and I'm hard niching to make the creator thing work out.
I switch my writings, and YouTube creation to mostly be about Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) and start a podcast aptly named "Personal Knowledge Management With Aidan Helfant."
For a full year I'm hard into this PKM space. I'm creating videos, articles, podcasts, and courses like Obsidian University And The Art Of Linked Reading. My subscriber count is blowing up with my first viral video Watch This To Finally Understand The Zettelkasten Method In Obsidian getting hundreds of thousands of views.
My newsletter subs are booming:
My podcast downloads are climbing:
I'd traded my Minecraft fortress for a different kind of shelter--the safe walls of a profitable niche.
So everything's great, right?
Nope.
The numbers were climbing, but I was dying. I had built my niche. Now it felt more like a cage.
Firstly, creating a video, podcast, and newsletter every week, while a full time student, in four clubs, with a girlfriend, is not sustainable. Second, to put it simply, I was getting bored.
I started creating content for four reasons:
- To learn
- To express myself
- To help people
- To make BOATLOADS OF MONEY! WOOOOHHHHH!
Creating content strictly on PKM, only the last two were being done. Every time I hit 'publish' on another PKM video, a small voice inside whispered: "Is this really all you want to be known for? There are so many other PKM YouTubers, some of them with better content than you."
There are enough echoes on the internet. What if you could sing?
Naturally, I'd silence these thoughts by checking my analytics, watching the numbers climb. But numbers, I was learning, make terrible band-aids for the soul. The irony wasn't lost on me–here I was teaching people how to manage knowledge, while feeling increasingly disconnected from my own inner knowing.
The climax of this era came when my first girlfriend texted me at 8:37 a.m. saying "we needed to talk." Gulping, I made my way to her room. I knew I was fucked when I saw a box of tissues on the bed as I opened the door. That day she almost broke up with me. She didn't feel I was "present" in the relationship.
Something needed to change.
Inflection Point Five: Moving On...
So towards the end of 2023, I made a major decision. A decision which may have cost me my chances at becoming a full-time creator.
I moved on.
I began creating content on my other interests. I discussed humor. Happiness. Philosophy. Video games. Psychology. And more…
As I expected, each time I posted this type of content, I'd watch my carefully built subscriber slow down and drop. Every unsubscribe felt like a friend walking away.
But then something strange happened–the fewer people who watched, the more alive I felt. It was like taking off a suit I'd been wearing to a very long funeral–one where I'd been mourning my own curiosity.
I put on my metaphorical Hawaiian shirt (and then an actual one, because why not?) and every day began to dance, dance in the mystery of it all.
I started getting giddy again at the thought of a new video. I began asking questions on my podcast out of genuine curiosity rather than feeling pigeonholed into PKM. I began writing poetry, POETRY!!!
This brings us to now.
My Vision For This Newsletter In The Future
I'm still creating content following my interests. No, the views aren't as good, even though I think the videos are way better:
So here's what I promise you for the next 100 editions: no more hiding behind jargon or chasing algorithms. Just real conversations about the messy, beautiful process of growing into ourselves. Sometimes, we'll talk about meta-learning or gamification, sometimes about the poetry of everyday life, and sometimes about why this one scene in a movie makes me cry every single time.
Perhaps I'll never be a full-time content creator. But if I do become one, I'll become one creating authentically the whole way. Because that's what friends do – they let each other be their whole selves.
Speaking of friends, that's you. Here's to 100 newsletter editions 🥂. To all of you who've stuck with me through the fitness videos, the PKM tutorials, and now the poetry. Here's to a hundred more editions of following our curiosity wherever it leads.