About the Yorimichi Newsletter: Why I, with 14,000 X followers, don't keep back issues.
"Yorimichi-san, you're already amazing enough."
How did I take those words?
Step by step, through gritty, persistent effort, I looked up to find large numbers lined up on the other side of the screen.
14,000 on X, 1,200 on note, 500 on YouTube.
These are the numbers I have now, after over three years of posting.
Perhaps you were looking at those numbers from across the screen.
However, what was spreading there wasn't just warm enthusiasm.
There was a strange loneliness where the more the numbers grew, the thinner the connections became.
Days where I felt like I was losing sight of whether my voice was reaching anyone on a main street with 14,000 people.
The feeling that only easy, disposable content was being consumed, rather than the deep thoughts I truly wanted to convey.
I was hitting an invisible wall all by myself.
Business books around me preach, "Narrow your focus, automate your systems. Become a distant figure."
Target your audience, treat your followers as a system, they say.
I understand it in my head. I just need to build a system.
But my emotions get in the way no matter what.
I can't help but be moved by the tears and worries of the person right in front of me.
Unable to become a system, unable to be cold and calculating, I scattered my overflowing emotions across the floor.
"How bad I am at living."
I am someone who cannot live efficiently or skillfully.
Is it because of my developmental disability?
I grew sick of those words time and time again.
But then, I suddenly put down the rag and left the main street.
When I looked toward the back, I found a place that wasn't a system, but a place with real, living blood.
The newsletter "Yorimichi Dayori"
note membership 'Yorimichi no Chizu' (Map of Yorimichi)
There were people who left the hustle and bustle of the main street that is X, stopped to read my note, felt my personality through YouTube, and finally entered the atelier (newsletter) that is the behind-the-scenes of my creative work.
It brings tears to my eyes.
But,
I am a bus stop for sheltering from the rain.
That is precisely why I do not keep 'back issues' of this newsletter.
At first glance, it might look like marketing to stir up scarcity, but that is not the truth.
I close the door to the atelier, and let the people who are there with me right now see me spilling my raw, overflowing emotions onto the floor and wiping them up.
Some people laugh, some people cry.
That is the drama.
I will not let people who come later consume a massive archive of the past with their precious time.
I want you to see the brilliance of life in this very moment.
Every Thursday, Yorimichi updates the newsletter.
Once a month, there is a drawing of mine there.
I want you to use it as your smartphone wallpaper.
Every month, I will deliver a newly drawn illustration that captures the emotions of that time, in smartphone wallpaper size. Picture book'The Day Yorimichi Was Born'
It is a digital painting created in Procreate using the same technique as the book.
It is a real-time version of the gritty story I have been continuing for over three years.
To you who have come here now, I want to hand over words that still hold body heat and a wallpaper.
One day in May, a few days after I had coffee with someone I trust and discussed my future activities, I realized something.
What I have been doing is not efficient marketing.
In a world that is skillful at pretending not to see the emotions spilled on the floor and trampling over them, I have been clumsily facing them and wiping them up. It is that very 'clumsy way of living' that has saved everyone and brought them together.
People often say, 'I want to save others.'
But that is wrong. I was the one who was saved.
The path of an artist named Yorimichi, who has lived a messy, struggling life, overflowing with emotions, getting hurt, and living in the mud.
However, all those scattered fragments are the 'work' of a single human being that no one else can imitate.
And I will pay it back.
For the amount I once despaired of life, I want to pay it back.
I want you to see the 'now' that I have been sharing for over three years through my newsletter.
Yorimichi will update the newsletter again this Thursday.
With words that still hold warmth, and a monthly wallpaper.
I am waiting for those who will live alongside me in real-time.
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