I still remember the first time I hit publish.

It was a Tuesday. I’d skipped breakfast. My hands were shaking a little. I’d written and rewritten the post three times. Edited it again the night before. Then again that morning. It still didn’t feel ready. But I told myself it was time.

I clicked publish and just stared at the screen. I didn’t know what I was expecting. Maybe a comment. A like. A message from someone saying, “Hey, this meant something.” But nothing happened.

I refreshed the page. Checked my email. Nothing. I waited an hour. Then two. Still nothing.

So I went for a walk around the block. It was cold and I hadn’t brought a jacket. I just needed to move. To do something other than sit in that feeling of maybe this was stupid. I walked past the same row of houses I always did, but everything felt different. Like I’d just shouted into a canyon and was waiting for the echo.

The next morning, still nothing. Not even a spam comment. I remember thinking, maybe I’m not good enough to be a writer. Maybe I’m not cut out for this.

A few months later, I came across something about Stephen King that surprised me. Before Carrie, he’d already been writing for years. In his book On Writing, he talked about the nail he kept on his wall to hang rejection slips. Over time, there were too many. So he swapped the nail for a spike.

That stuck with me.

I didn’t realize how many writers had built their careers that way. With no guarantees. No signs they were on the right track. Just the work. Day after day. No audience. No applause.

A couple hundred posts in, I thought I’d feel more confident. But I didn’t.

I’d open a new draft, stare at the blinking cursor, and wonder if I had anything left to say.

There was one afternoon I still think about. I’d written something I liked. I actually felt good about it. Hit publish. Took a walk. Came back a few hours later and checked. Five views. Zero comments. One like. Probably from someone I knew.

I just sat there. Staring at the screen. I opened a Google Doc. Closed it. Clicked over to Twitter. Scrolled for a bit. Shut the whole thing down and made a sandwich.

“What if this is it?” I thought. “What if I never break through?”

And I’d started to wonder if it was always going to feel like that.

I tried to remind myself that others had felt this too. Octavia Butler, for one. She’d written for years before anything landed. She once scribbled in her journal, in all caps, “I WILL BE A BESTSELLING WRITER.”

There was another quote of hers I saved: “You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.”

I wasn’t looking for inspiration. I just needed to know I wasn’t wasting my time. That I wasn’t the only one publishing into the void. Hoping something eventually stuck.

And I think that’s what kept me going. Not belief. Not momentum. Just the idea that maybe I wasn’t alone.

There was another night, months later, when I stayed up way too late trying to get a piece right.

I rewrote the intro four times. Deleted entire sections. Hated every word.

When I finally hit publish, it was almost 1 a.m. I went to bed angry. Not at anyone. Just at myself. For wasting time. For caring so much about something so small.

The next morning, I checked. Twenty-three views. No comments. One like.

I remember sitting at my desk, sipping my coffee, thinking, “Maybe this is where it ends.”

That same day, I saw a post from James Clear. He said Atomic Habits was his first book, but it only existed because he’d written online for five years straight. Two posts a week. Every week. Most of them didn’t go viral. Most didn’t do well at all.

But he kept showing up.

And I thought, huh. That’s impressive.

Not because of the book. But because of the timeline.

I realized I wasn’t behind. I was just early.

Somewhere around post 700, I stopped checking stats. Not because I’d stopped caring. But because I had more important things to deal with.

That month, I started noticing little things.

Someone emailed to say they’d read every post I’d written in the past six months.
Another person shared an old essay of mine and called it their favorite thing on the internet. That one caught me off guard. I didn’t even like that post anymore. But it had meant something to them.

I’d spent so much time trying to monetize my writing. Studying how to beat the algorithm. Trying to grow faster. Get more followers. Become a bestselling author.

I almost missed the fact that I was growing. Just not in the way I expected.

My writing was better. I could feel it. I trusted my instincts more. I knew when something was working and when it wasn’t.

I stopped over-explaining everything. I stopped trying to sound clever. I just said what I meant.

That month, I wrote one post in a single sitting. No overthinking. No edits. I sat down. Wrote it. Hit publish. Closed the tab. Went for a walk.

That might sound small. But it wasn’t. That was new.

When I checked in a day later, I saw something I hadn’t in a while. Replies. Real ones. Not just “Nice post” or a thumbs-up. People were sharing their stories. Talking about their own fears. Their own stuck places.

And that’s when it clicked for me.

This whole time, I’d been trying to win the internet. But what I actually wanted was connection. Not reach. Not virality. Just a handful of people who read my work and saw themselves in it.

It’s 2025 now. I’ve written over a thousand posts. Probably closer to 2,000 if you count the ones I never published. The ones I saved and never opened again. The ones I deleted five minutes after posting because I couldn’t stand how they sounded.

Sometimes people ask how I kept going.

And I never really know how to answer that.

It wasn’t discipline. Or strategy. Or some grand ambition.

I just didn’t want to stop. Even when it felt pointless. Even when it felt like no one cared.

If I could go back and talk to my younger self who desperately wanted to be a writer, I’d tell him this…