#1 Breaking down the simple - Not Super Smart

Why I started Not Super Smart, and what I intend on doing with it

This is my first email ever! I’m so excited to be sending it out to you. I wanted to start with a quick note on how and why I created Not Super Smart. Hoping you like reading it.

---

Writing, to me, has been the most powerful language of expression. Since childhood, the same words that I couldn't speak, seemed to arrange themselves tastefully on paper like an earnest group of school kids falling in line. Whether it was a letter to my mom at 10, telling her how I absolutely needed to have a new set of paints, or a note to my then best friend about how she was breaking my heart by having a new best friend. What started out as letters to convey the urgency of my feelings, transformed itself into a recurring habit of transcribing the world's occurrences into notebooks over the years.

Writing itself is usually the easy part, though - it's even cathartic. It's what comes after that's an internal battle. Once the words are out, it's up to me to decide what to do with them. Will I finally let them out of hiding? Will a momentary rush of courage allow the words to sneak past my impostor syndrome and into the big wild world of the internet?

The words have found their way out, a couple of times, and have even found homes in the minds of people I didn't even know were reading my words.

Yashmi: 1 Impostor Syndrome: 0

I'm now finding that the key to beating Impostor Syndrome is to actually do the thing it's telling you you can't, and then shove the success in its face - and this means actually hitting publish [wild!]. So, here it is:

Not Super Smart [Just regular smart] - A bi-monthly newsletter that breaks down the seemingly simple stuff, hoping to find aha! moments in the mundane.

"But.. Why are you breaking down simple concepts?"

Quick exercise - if I asked you to tell me what a bird looks like, you'd tell me it has wings and a beak. General knowledge. If I asked you to draw a bird, it's likely that you'd want to look up a reference image to remind your brain what a wing and a beak are shaped like. This is because our brains are so accustomed to certain concepts, that they don't really see them as new. "It's just a bird!" And because we don't see things as new, we don't look closely, or try to really understand them. Ever wondered why the film Inside Out is loved so widely?

The thing with really seeing things, is that you notice its cracks and its cuts and all the things that make it real - it's not perfect anymore; but the great thing about noticing its realness, is that the thing becomes more relatable, more accessible, and more connection-worthy. This is true for birds, for humans, and even businesses. Besides, wouldn't it be nicer to see the world in a relatable, accessible, and connection-worthy light?

Great, tell me more about Not Super Smart!

More often than not, it's a series of metamorphoses that, when put together, become the journey to greatness. The key, though, is to seek out the metamorphosis, or it may not happen. Not Super Smart is an attempt at seeking it out, consistently. An attempt at learning [about our collective humanness] in public; to break things down and then build our own views, instead of the second-hand views we're all handed growing up.

Not Super Smart is about asking more and interesting questions, breaking down the surface level information, and building new perspectives.

Why does making friends get difficult as we grow older?

Why is loneliness still a taboo despite all the mental health activism?

Not Super Smart is where I throw complexity out the window, and dive into the how's and why's so I (you, too) can see the world differently.

Yashmi: 2 Impostor Syndrome: 0

Just regular smart,

Yashmi