#146: Running the Numbers

How Brussels Notes failed in 2025 (and why it also didn't)

Thanks for reading - I’m writer Eoghan Walsh and this is my weekly free-to-subscribe newsletter about life in Brussels. If you like it and you’re not already subscribed, you can sign up here!

It’s the last day of 2025 - and that means a brief round-up and thank you note for you, the readers.

---

On this, the final day of the year, I have an admission to make to Brussels Notes subscribers. This newsletter has failed; or, more accurately, I have failed. At the beginning of 2025 I set myself the simple challenge of publishing one newsletter entry a week, every week, for the year. 52 articles, how hard could that be, I thought?

I also hoped, through this consistency of output, to double the number of newsletter subscribers on the way to reaching the 1,500-subscriber milestone. That would have largely tracked 2024’s growth rate, so again I thought this was a reasonable ambition. Based on these two metrics, however, 2025 was a failure for this newsletter. I did not manage to publish something every week, and while we hit 1,000 subscribers as early as January, numbers levelled off after that and with new people signing up and older subscribers abandoning ship, net subscriber growth was more or less flat across the rest of the year.

What do I put this down to? Some of this can be attributed to second album syndrome; it’s harder to keep yourself going, to continue to push through writing lulls and dips in confidence, if you’re not driven by the first flush of creative energy that comes with launching a new project. After 12 months of newsletter evangelising, your hustling instincts are also somewhat dulled. A major factor too, and one which I’ve written about on these pages and elsewhere, is my oscillating neurological health. I lost whole weeks in 2025 to pre- and post-migraine sluggishness, and the attendant brain fog that makes writing a challenge. Fortunately, a change in migraine medication in the autumn has meant I’ve suffered only one (waking) attack since October - the cause of which was easily identified as a consequence of going on a bit of a rip during a Madrid city trip.

What this uptick in neurological stability has meant for this newsletter is that, while I didn’t manage a newsletter every week, I did manage to put out a total of 65 entries across the year - largely thanks to the 19-part daily series on Brussels’ communes with which I rounded out 2025 in a blaze of psychogeographical musings. It has also given me more confidence going into 2026 that a commitment to weekly articles really is possible - necessary, even, if I want to keep Brussels Notes going.

Because as much as I am frustrated that those headline targets were missed this year, I do not actually think the newsletter is a failure. In fact, the mere fact of its survival in a more or less regular fashion through 2025 is evidence of its success. I am really proud of some of the work I’ve published here, and while not all of it has chimed with you readers in the way I might have hoped (which is an experience every writer will understand), many of the most-read Brussels Notes entries of 2025 are also some of my favourites. And for that, I want to thank all of you subscribers for sticking around, for commenting on articles and sharing them, and for emailing me your thoughts or reactions - even (especially) when our views are diametrically opposed.

I’m looking forward to continuing this conversation about Brussels into the coming year, and through 2026 the Brussels Notes formula will remain largely unchanged. I hope to be more consistent in finishing out newsletter series I launch (looking at you, Brussels food courts), giving articles more space for editing before publication, and redoubling my copy-editing efforts (it is, after all, my day job…). But the themes and subjects of the newsletter will largely remain unchanged; that is, the day-to-day experience of living in, and navigating around, this city in all its messy chaos. I may even, following feedback from a trusted writer friend of mine, make an effort to write about aspects of the city I enjoy rather than always drawing on about its many failings.

That’s not to say I am uninterested in the views of readers as to where I can take the newsletter in the next 12 months. What kind of work have you most enjoyed this year? What do you think has been missing? What would you like to see more of? There might even be opportunities in the future for other writers to take charge of the Brussels Notes bully pulpit, so stay tuned for that too.

In any case, thanks again to all of you who have read, subscribed, liked, commented, and generally encouraged me to keep going with Brussels Notes. And because it’s the end of the year, and everyone else is doing it, I’ve rounded up some stats to give you a peek behind the Brussels Notes editorial curtain.

See you next week, in 2026.

Brussels Notes: 2025 in numbers

67 - the number of entries published on Brussels Notes in 2025

1,106 - how many of you lovely subscribers there are out there. Thank you all!

2 - the number of editions of PINTJES we published this year, with two more already in the planning for 2026

106 - the net increase in Brussels Notes subscribers in 2025. Not great, not terrible. Go out there and tell your friends to subscribe!

73,100 - the amount of words I wrote for this newsletter

1 - the number of awards PINTJES won in 2025 (we should have swept the board, daylight robbery, etc.)

3,404 - the number of readers of the most-read article on Brussels Notes this year: “#123: 46 Reasons To Love Brussels Right Now”

843 - the number of readers of the least-read article on Brussels Notes this year: “#143: The Prelude”

---