I’ve often thought of a “decade” as some sort of vague time period not relevant to my life. But it is! A decade is an entire third of my life right now, and for the last decade, I’ve been running Kat’s Kable. A decade. What a surreal feeling.

I feel a deep sense of happiness, pride and accomplishment for keeping the Kable running this long. It’s an extension of me, pretty much - a place for me to feed, indulge and grow my curiosity about the world. I still remember writing the Kable for the first time - a combination of me sending cool things to read to my friends, me being inspired by people around me starting TinyLetters, and honestly an inspired choice of naming (I’m Kat + I’d just read Cat’s Cradle + who doesn’t love an alliteration?).

In a way, I’ve always wanted to play the long game. After the first few issues, I remember thinking to myself, “whoa, wouldn’t it be cool to one day get to Kat’s Kable #1000?”. Almost halfway there now :)

I’ve gone back to Maria Popova’s 10 Learnings from 10 Years of Brain Pickings many many times, and I’ve never indulged myself in writing something like it myself. No longer! Here’s my version of notes to myself about the Kable:

1. The Kable is an infinite game: I’m a big fan of James Carse’s book Finite and Infinite Games. An infinite game is a set of sustained interactions where the aim isn’t to win, but to keep playing. It allows for an expansive view of the world. For me, the Kable has never been a means to an end, because there is no end. The joy of the Kable is in the unfolding, and in keeping it alive in a way that nourishes me. It doesn’t only nourish my curiosity, but also my social life! I’ve made friends via the newsletter, I’ve gotten my current job (and hence met Samira) via the Kable, and more. There’s no way any of these would have happened had I had a more narrow view of the Kable, or viewed it as a “project” with a certain end.

2. I do it for myself: Looking back, I’ve had many moments when I’ve felt like I didn’t really want to continue. Honestly, most times when I send the Kable out, I get zero replies and maybe a couple of acknowledgements from friends/family. What I’ve done consistently is ask myself, “would I still curate the Kable if I didn’t have an audience? Is it fun for its own sake?” and thankfully, the answer to that has almost always been yes.

3. I’ve been stubborn with my format: The Kable doesn’t look materially different now than it did back in 2016. I’ve been stubborn! I liked the format, and it has been easy for me to put it together this way. Changes I’ve made have been minor - I remember back in 2018/19 I had three mini-themes in each set of ten articles, but even that wasn’t too different from what it is now. Looking back, I like this: I reflect “stubbornness” as a positive thing, in fact.

4. In retrospect, I could have been a more aggressive marketer: Not only have I been stubborn, I’ve been a strange combination of bashful and arrogant in my positioning. I never wanted to shout out about the Kable from the rooftops, and I also thought, “The Kable is so good, and the readership will come.” Considering the fact that I’ve had pretty much no growth in my readership base in the last five years, this feels like I was just silly - I should have marketed myself more!

5. Reading widely is joyful: The Kable is essentially me following my curiosity. Having a conduit for it is joyful in a way that I can’t quantify or describe. The Kable is, in a way, me giving myself the license or the permission to take this sort of exploration more seriously. I have always enjoyed knowing things and showing that off, and in my undergrad this manifested primarily as my passion for quizzing. I grew out of that, though - both by the nature of the competition and the orientation towards facts - and I’ve found that the Kable is now my way of feeding a critical part of myself.

6. Very cool and unexpected things have happened as a result of the Kable: Yes! I could never have imagined these when I started off. I like to joke that my newsletter-friend Kriti, who I’d never met, was the one who introduced me to my current workplace and hence led to me meeting Samira. And the Kable reached Kriti because of another dear friend, Anjani! People talk about increasing the surface area of your luck, or about concepts like writing things being equivalent to constructing complex search queries to find fascinating people, and yeah, that’s what the Kable has been. It’s been so rewarding to find the Kable come back and surprise me in these ways. And it makes me feel like I need to be a better marketer to make more of this happen.

7. There’s a lot of confidence I get from having kept something going for a decade: I know I’m pretty good at a lot of the cerebral things I do, but mental stamina hasn’t been my strongest suit. I still remember feeling bad about “silly mistakes” I made in my math exams in school. As I sit down writing this, reflecting on curating the Kable for a decade, I feel this surge of self-assurance. I can do something consistently for this long. Wow. I started the Kable before Substack was founded! In fact, I feel prouder of the fact I’ve run the Kable for a decade than I do for completing my PhD. I suppose the percentage of newsletters that run for ten years is lower than the success rate of completing a PhD :)

8. I eventually realized that curation is an active choice: I had always seen myself as a conduit - but I’m actually more. When I was in the final year of my undergrad (just when I started the Kable and took my first Adult decisions), I thought that the best thing for me to do was something “pure” and apolitical. That’s why I chose to do a physics PhD. Fundamental science is apolitical, right? When my research group’s members were invited to military conferences about securing missiles, I realized the joke was on me. I also thought that my job in life was to “reduce” my footprint (carbon and more) because it was all bad. That is why I thought of the Kable as some idealistic thing - I was just the messenger. I realize now that curation is an active choice, and I now aspire to have a larger, and significantly positive, footprint in the things I do and for the people around me.

9. There’s a sense of stagnation from just being a conduit: Telling myself I was a passive curator was problematic from another angle - it was boring! Many people, including my dad and my dear friend Valerie, told me that they read the Kable for my commentary, for my choices, and not necessarily for the long articles I shared. This was another piece of feedback which prompted me to be a more active curator. And when I think about it now, I want to write new pieces synthesizing things I’ve read; I want to bring new ideas and metaphors to my thinking and to my creative output.

10. Maybe the format will have to change: Let’s face it. People don’t really read anymore. And maybe the future will entail your AI agent reading and summarizing the Kable for you. We are entering brave new worlds, uncanny valleys, and all sorts of other technological (or dystopian, you pick) futures. When I reflect on the stubbonness that kept the Kable the same for this long, I don’t feel so strongly about it now. I feel that the Kable will have to evolve a bit more and I feel comfortable steering it actively.