Welcome to Tales from a Content Creator: Behind the Data Stories, a newsletter about the messy, honest, unpolished reality of creating content in the data world. Not the final slides. Not the polished dashboards and definitely not the neatly edited posts.
This space is for everything before that.
The half‑formed ideas. The sessions that refuse to come together. The drafts that get rewritten five times. The unexpected turns, the lessons learnt, the “I’m not sure I can do this” moments that happen long before anything goes live.
If you’ve ever wondered what really goes on behind the scenes of content creation, the ups, the downs, and all the strange little in‑betweens, you’re in the right place.
Now… let me tell you how we got here. After wrapping up STEM Demystified, I told myself I’d focus on more technical content. And to be fair, I did. Dashboards, DAX, accessibility tools, GitHub repos, all the good stuff. But every now and then, I’d write something a bit more personal. A bit less structured. A bit more… human. And if I’m honest, I’ve missed it. Quite a lot.
And that’s really what led me back here, because the moment I drift toward the more human side of things, the questions start rolling in.
People often ask about the content‑creator bit. First: “How did you even get started?” Then: “How do you come up with ideas all the time?” And finally, the one that always makes me laugh, “You’ve always been confident, right?”
That last question says a lot. It comes from this polished assumption that content creators, speakers, anyone who shows up publicly… must have begun that way. Confident. Outgoing. Naturally comfortable being seen and heard. As if confidence is some kind of entry requirement. It isn’t.
The reality is far less tidy. I have doubts. Regularly. I second‑guess ideas more than I’d like to admit. I’ve looked at drafts, slides, recordings and thought, “Absolutely not.”
And yes, there have been moments where I’ve seriously considered dropping everything and moving to a farm in North Wales. No dashboards. No deadlines. Just me, a flock of sheep, and, because I refuse to let go of a good idea, a slightly chaotic goat café on the side.
Honestly, some days that sounds like a very solid plan. But I don’t. And that’s because as much as creating content and speaking comes with discomfort, it also comes with something else: connection and growth. Those small moments where something you’ve built lands with someone in a way you didn’t expect. And that part is difficult to walk away from.
So here I am! This newsletter is my way of sharing the real process, the nonlinear, imperfect, occasionally chaotic journey behind the data stories I create.
And if there’s one thing I want you to take away from this first edition, it’s that You don’t have to start confident. You don’t have to have it all figured out. You don’t even have to feel ready. You just need to be willing to start somewhere… even if that “somewhere” feels a bit uncertain.
So this is me, starting again. Not because I have it all figured out, but because I’m finally willing to show the parts I used to hide, the process, the doubt, the learning.
If any of that resonates with you, you’re exactly where you need to be.