It's Hard to Grow When You're This Scared

July 2024 Reflections | 🚧 my substack journal 003

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Another month on Substack has come and gone; another five posts have been published and another five videos have been recorded. I’ve published 17 weeks in a row (top 16% of publishers) according to the weekly email I receive from Substack. When this post goes live Monday morning, I'll have published 21 posts since I launched on April 1st, 2024.

But, as I head into August, I’m just not sure what I’m doing on Substack anymore, or what I’m trying to achieve here.

When I started on Substack, I had two main goals: 1) overcome my fear of writing online and 2) make friends.

I’m grateful to say I feel like I’ve succeeded in terms of the latter. I’m fortunate to have the same group of intelligent, kind, thoughtful humans showing up each week to read and comment on my work (you know who you are, and you’re the best!). I’ve made some meaningful human connections here, and many of you have shared your personal, vulnerable stories with me in the comments. As slow as I can be to comment back, I hope you all know how much I appreciate you and never take your time or engagement for granted. Collectively, you all make me feel valued and less alone, a gift I can’t thank you enough for.

My other reason, though, overcoming my fear of writing online (or for a pubic audience in general), has been less successful.

I still get anxious and refuse to check my app every time I publish a personal essay. The vulnerability is necessary, in my opinion, to write what's on my heart, but it makes for an odd ritual to feel this uncomfortable every Monday.

The latest growth stats according to Substack.

Based on what I've seen and experienced, there are two main ways to grow on Substack if you arrived to this platform without a preexisting, established audience: 1) discover and comment on “x” number of other Substacks a day; and 2) post daily Notes and comment on other folks’ Notes.

I posted a Note every day for my first two months on Substack, something I wrote about in my last Substack journal entry. I gained hundreds of followers posting Notes, but so what? What does that mean? I haven't seen any new faces liking my work or leaving comments. Maybe those new followers translated into more likes on my Notes, but I want to share my writing with people—not my Tweets. There’s a reason I was never on Twitter. I just don’t need the bite-size dopamine hits.

Posting Notes every day also meant a daily dose of anxiety since that’s the only place on Substack where I have received weird, pedantic, smart ass, or hostile comments. So, I haven’t posted a Note since June (although I’ve restacked a few posts from writers I respect, which I don’t count as posting a Note).

Although refraining from posting Notes provides relief from some of the Substack-related anxiety I feel, it also means I don't promote myself or my new posts. I don’t engage with the community or get involved with discussions in the comments section. I’m like a Substack agoraphobe, never leaving my digital home in fear something bad will happen if I do.

It’s hard to grow when you’re this scared.

Meanwhile, it’s taken every bit of my energy and discipline to get a new post out every week. This means I spend no time on the app; sadly, this also means I’m not on to read the work of my friends, let alone discover and comment on new writers’ work in hopes of reaching new communities.

And isn’t that kind of selfish and lame, anyway? I'm going to find “five new Substacks a day”¹ to comment on in some transactional way? Even if the comment is genuine—which it would be—the motivation is the same: please read my work and help me grow.

It just feels kind of icky.

I recognize, by the way, none of this is unique. I think most if not all new writers on the platform experience something similar. And all of it is solvable, more or less. But to mitigate my anxiety about writing online and to address my lack of growth, my purpose and motivation for doing so must be clear and powerful.

Unfortunately, outside of connecting with other Substack writers and readers, I’m not sure what I'm doing on dad trying.

The idea behind the name is to document my efforts to be a little better today than I was yesterday across all the different roles I inhabit. Yet, this self-development focus has hardly been what I've been writing.

Instead, most of my pieces inevitably circle back to my mental health struggles: the struggles of being a parent to a child with special needs, the struggles to find meaning in my daily life, and the struggles to overcome my anxiety and self-doubt. While I think it would be reductive to call my work “trauma dumping,” my Substack has nonetheless become a place for me to open and share my heart in hopes it provides comfort to other folks out there experiencing similar things. And, based on the comments I received on July’s most successful post “Doctor’s Note,” I sometimes succeed.

But, from a craft perspective, I find myself thinking each Monday after the latest post goes live: “Is this who I am as an essayist? I write confessional essays?” It’s a body of work I'm not ashamed of, but one I am surprised by now that themes and common threads have emerged across the 20 posts I’ve published on dad trying. Sometimes when you see your reflection in the body of work you produce, the image can be startling.

I guess this is what happens when you don’t have a content calendar.

There’s also a pragmatic dimension to my concerns about the intimate nature of my work: I’m a university administrator and instructor. Sometimes I wonder if this is one of the dumbest things I could be doing to sabotage my career; here I am posting about the depth of my mental health struggles for all the world to see when my day job is to be a manager, leader, mentor, and teacher to nearly 100 undergraduate college students, not to mention being a reliable, professional colleague.

I started a Substack to be a good role model for my students and the undergraduate writing tutors I work with, to show them how enriching a writing and literary life can be outside of the academy; I wanted to show them what it looks like to pursue your writing dreams; and I wanted to model what it means to live a life of the mind. Instead, I'm increasingly ashamed of how unstable and sad my mind appears to be and concerned it’s becoming a professional liability rather than an asset.

So, what do I hope to gain by writing here every week, and is it worth it? And what does that mean for my writing in August, then? I'm not sure.

If you have thoughts as a reader of this Substack, let me know in the comments.

By the way, in a ridiculous postscript to this post—one about my concerns writing online and sharing personal stories—I somehow doubled down and started a Medium account.

Substack remains my priority and favorite place to write (and read), and I’ll still be posting here every Monday, but I’m experimenting with different types of writing on Medium, and it’s just another creative sandbox for me to figure out my writerly identity.

I’m publishing new work on Medium, which means I’m not copy/pasting my existing Substack posts (although don’t be surprised to find the occasional overlap or reused quote/epigraph because I’m introducing myself to a new audience/platform over there).

➡️ If you want to support me on Medium and read more of my work, check out my first post: “When the Temporal Horizon Flips.”

See you next week. 🧡

                                                          Thanks for Reading

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Catch Up on My July 2024 Posts:

• My First 12 Weeks on Substack

• Doctor’s Note

• Reflecting on My Dad’s 65th Birthday

• The Sweet Pleasure of Ditching

• Some Assembly Required

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1. If you’re wondering where this number or idea comes from, I’ve seen some version of this in countless Notes or “Tips to Grow Your Substack” articles. I imagine you have too.