Hey Aphro Pick,

Thanks for your honest comment.

I’m flattered that you’d consider my work to be intimidating… but I’d like to tell you that this piece was not what I considered to be one of my best works. However, I remember that when I was writing this, I was trying to be radically honest and share all of the fears, doubts, and negative thoughts that were plaguing my life over the last two years.

Everyone starts at zero. Your focus shouldn’t be about the quantity of followers or the readers you get. Easier said than done, I know, but trust me when I say that focusing on the quantitative aspects of your writing will never make you feel fulfilled and happy. It obviously feels good when you notice that people are enjoying and acknowledging your content, but I’ve noticed that it is just like social media. My happiness and self-worth started to come from claps and follows. My original mission for writing became distorted as I started gaining recognition. I stopped writing for myself and started writing for others, losing my genuine voice, my initial drive, and my creative spirit along the way.

That’s why I had to take a step back. I had to ask myself why I started writing in the first place, and if my reason was solely for the fame. You know what the weirdest part is? You’d think that writing for others will make your message resonate with them, but the exact opposite is true. When I started writing for myself, talking about the things I cared about and what I found interesting, my followers/likes grew exponentially. It was strange. The moment I started writing for myself, other people started resonating with a message. The moment I started helping myself, other people were helped. When I focused on myself, other people started focusing on me. Weird huh?

Please don’t tell yourself that 1000 followers is beyond anything you could ever reach. As I said in this piece, you are the only one who gets to set the limits for yourself. You are the one who can dictate whether or not you can get there. If your initial thought is to already make the end goal an impossibility, you won’t even dare to try. You don’t want to fail, you don’t want to get embarrassed, you don’t want to feel like you’re not good enough… but is there any other way? Don’t let fear paralyze you — it is to be confronted and it is to be overcome.

Don’t feel like you need immediate success and gain massive amounts of followers. It took me 2 years to get to where I am, and I regret that I took so much time off because I doubted myself and set my own limits. Imagine if I had written everyday for the last two years? Where could I be? What could I have become? Not that I regret taking the time off, as I think I needed that time of self-reflection, but that’s a lot of lost opportunity that I could have taken advantage of.

Life is about facing challenges and conquering them. It’s not about taking it easy and having the happiest and most comfortable life you can have. We don’t find meaning that way. We need to struggle and grow and strive to become the greatest versions of ourselves. We all want to make a dent in this universe, but most of us will fail because we won’t even dare to try.

Hang in there, put your head down, and keep working on your craft. I believe that, with the proper sacrifices and plenty of hard work and perseverance, you will be able to attain whatever you desire.

Thanks again for reading and sharing your thoughts. Best of luck, and I will leave my favorite quote that I leave for those who need some encouragement.

“To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities — I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not — that one endures.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche,