The World Isn't Asking for Your Work

Here's why you should make it anyway.

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Most days I write whether I feel like it or not.

Not because I’m disciplined.

Because I figured out a long time ago what happens when I don’t.

I go a few days without writing and I feel restless. Like something in my life is off balance and I can’t say what.

When I start writing again it goes away.

Everything feels okay.

That’s why I can’t call it discipline.

Because you don’t need discipline to eat or sleep or breathe.

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We treat making things like a luxury.

Something you earn after the real work is done.

But I think that’s backwards.

Making things isn’t the reward for a working life.

It’s part of what keeps your life working.

Food and sleep keep the body alive.

This keeps the rest of you alive.

But there’s a second part to this, and it’s the part most people skip.

That part is sharing your work.

When you share something true, you’re saying: this is what life feels like for me.

And every so often, someone says it back.

“Me too.”

That me too does something the work alone can’t do.

It reminds us we’re not the only one.

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The work does its job the moment you make it and let it out.

Everything after that is a different conversation.

The likes, the streams, the views…

They measure how far it traveled.

Not whether it worked.

A song can do its job for you and still only get nine plays.

The trap is letting the numbers become the point.

Because the moment they do, you start writing for the numbers and not for you.

And the thing that was keeping you sane turns into another job you’re trying to win.

I’ve done that.

We all do that…

But it’s a bad trade.

You hand over the one thing that was yours for a metric anyone can move.

So I try and keep the two separate.

What the work does for me and whether I share it, I get to keep.

What it does in public was never mine to begin with.

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So make your thing.

Whatever it is.

Not because the world is asking for it.

Make it because of what happens if you don’t.

Let it reach whoever it reaches.

One person is enough.

One person is the whole point.

And when the numbers come, or don’t, remember they were never the reason.

You didn’t make it to be counted.

You made it to feel like yourself again.

If you enjoyed reading this, the highest compliment I can think of is if you restacked it or shared it with one person who you think it would help.