Lupe Farkas

Dear Rebels,

October started exactly the way every month seems to start around here.

Slow.

And I am a hustler, so “slow” means only one thing:

So this morning I opened all the dashboards.

Website. Instagram. Facebook. LinkedIn. Podcast.

Numbers everywhere.

Some green. Some red. Some going up. Some apparently still sleeping.

And naturally, my first thought was:

Come on. We can do better than this.

Then I looked again.

Properly this time.

And I had to ask myself:

Lupe, why are you being so bloody tough on yourself?

Because these numbers are good.

They are not exploding overnight.

They are doing something much more interesting.

They are growing steadily.

And then I looked at them properly.

And suddenly it hit me.

BOOM.

The thing I have been dreaming about.

The thing I have been working so hard to build.

It is starting to happen.

New Rebels are discovering this little corner of the internet, while the audience that has already found it is beginning to hold.

The website is not rebuilding itself from zero every morning.

And that changed the way I saw everything.

For a moment, the numbers stopped being numbers.

They looked like the beginning of something I have wanted from the start: a place Rebels discover, remember and want to visit again.

I think I finally understand what I miss about the old internet.

I have written before about Bloglovin and how much I miss that period of the internet.

For a long time, I thought I simply missed blogs.

But that is not really it.

I miss anticipation.

I miss deliberately going somewhere because I wanted to see whether something new had appeared.

Did my favourite blogger post today?

What did she write?

What happened since yesterday?

And when something new was there, there was that tiny feeling of:

YES. There it is.

You chose to go there.

You wanted to read it.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realised that this feeling started long before Bloglovin.

Rebels have been waiting for the next one forever.

Across countries, cultures and generations, stories became part of our lives because they kept coming back.

And because sometimes we had to wait for them.

In Brazil, and across Latin America, there were telenovelas.

The episode ended.

And that was it.

You could complain all you wanted.

Tomorrow.

You spent the next day wondering what would happen.

Someone had a theory. Someone else was absolutely certain they knew the secret. Your mother knew exactly what the protagonist should do and was usually furious when she did the complete opposite.

Then the hour arrived.

The opening music started.

BOOM.

Back into the story.

And that feeling crossed borders.

Telenovelas. Soap operas. Serialized dramas. Stories that became part of everyday life across countries and generations.

When I lived in Italy, I watched Beautiful, The Bold and the Beautiful, with my grandma every day.

When I remember it now, the memory is not only about the programme.

It is about sitting there with her.

Same time.

Same characters.

Same ritual.

Waiting to discover what fresh disaster those beautiful rich Americans had managed to create for themselves that day.

😂

There were fotoromanzi, stories told through photographs in magazines.

Children waited for the next issue of Topolino, Donald Duck and their favourite comics.

Manga readers waited for the next chapter or volume.

And years later television gave us the feeling all over again.

Remember Game of Thrones?

One episode.
Then SEVEN DAYS.

Seven days of theories, arguments, memes, predictions and wondering who was going to die next.

House of the Dragon can still give us some of that feeling.

Different countries.

Different generations.

Different formats.

Same little thought:
I can’t wait for the next one.

Then came the endless scroll.

Somewhere along the way, our rhythm changed.

Now there is always another thing waiting underneath the thing we are looking at.

Swipe.

Another video.

Swipe.

Another post.

Swipe.

Another little possibility that the next thing might be funny, shocking, beautiful or interesting enough to make us keep going.

There is real psychology behind this.

Dopamine is often reduced online to a simple “happiness chemical”, but it is much more closely connected with motivation, reward-seeking and anticipation.

Endless feeds are exceptionally good at offering another possible reward immediately.

Maybe the next one.

And the next one.

And the next one.

The natural stopping points begin to disappear.

I use social media every day. I am not declaring war on scrolling.

But it gives us a very different experience from waiting for something we actually care about.

One constantly offers us something else immediately.

The other gives us something I think many of us still love:

Something to look forward to.

Maybe that is why The Chosen feels so right.

Publishing The Chosen chapter by chapter creates exactly that old rhythm.

You get the chapter.

You read it.

And then…

There is space between one chapter and the next for the story to stay with you.

You cannot immediately consume another twenty chapters because I haven’t bloody published them yet.

So you wait.

The waiting becomes part of the experience.

The anticipation becomes part of the story.

And suddenly I understood what I want this whole blog to feel like.

I want you to read something.

Laugh.

Think.

Discover a strange indie book.

Read a chapter.

Watch me attempt to build an author career powered primarily by stubbornness and Coke Zero.

Then leave.

Yes.

Leave.

Go live your life.

And maybe tomorrow you wake up and think:

Day 33: the numbers.

October 1 → October 2. Percentages first because they are considerably more dramatic.

Instagram · 30-day views

+5.8%

11,296 → 11,955

+659 rolling views

Instagram · interactions

+7.1%

976 → 1,045

+69 interactions

Podcast · 30-day plays

+4.2%

96 → 100

100 milestone

Podcast · listening time

+4.2%

28h 05m → 29h 15m

+1h 10m

LinkedIn · discovery

87%

of impressions came from outside my network

steady

Website · visitors

−2.4%

42 → 41

essentially steady

Website · views

−13.3%

105 → 91

daily views

Facebook · 7-day views

−8.5%

413 → 378

rolling snapshot

Before October Ends

The psychological diary novel behind a considerable amount of this indie-author chaos. Choose your language.

English · Before October Ends Italiano · Prima che Ottobre Finisca Português · Antes que Outubro Termine

Follow the chaos on Instagram @farkas_lupe · books, chapters, reviews and Coke Zero incidents →

Love you, Rebels. 🥤

The statistics above are snapshots recorded during the one-year Indie Author Experiment. Website figures are daily; Instagram and podcast figures use rolling 30-day windows; Facebook and LinkedIn figures use seven-day snapshots and will continue to change. Coke Zero is a trademark of The Coca-Cola Company. This post is not sponsored by or affiliated with Coca-Cola. Tragically.