I became a Substack Bestseller in 6 months and I don't think I deserve it
The Outsider Wound strikes again
Doing well on Substack has been a huge surprise for me.
I started writing here in November on a whim. I became a Substack Bestseller within 6 months (hundreds of paid subscribers, in Substack lingo).
I can’t tell you how hard that is for me to accept… like….?? It’s an incredible achievement and it’s hard for me to accept that I deserve it? Or that I even have it?
When things appear “easy” for someone else, my eye starts twitching. I’m literally imagining you rolling your eyes on the other side of the screen right now.
I’ve always wrestled with my creativity. We do a lot more roughhousing than playing nicely together. I’m VERY suspicious when something feels easy or is going well for me.
But writing on Substack has mostly felt pretty easy, like opening a pressure valve I didn’t realize was about to burst.
And like, look, I’m not about jerk off to Substack like it’s some incredible platform. It’s a tech platform with a lot of problems, like all of them. But, it’s a platform that has allowed me to share a more dynamic version of myself on the Internet. And after years of trying to cram myself into a 150 characters of an Instagram bio or a 7 second Tiktok trend, I’m just kind of bored with all that. It feels desperate, and I want it to feel easier.
I wrote my first Substack because I was angry (still am) about the results of the US Election. I didn’t know where to channel my rage (something I’ve realized I need to do more regularly), so I sat down and dumped all my feelings into a relatively coherent essay and sent it into the void of zero subscribers.
The next week, another piece poured out of me. It was a few days before my 37th birthday, and I was feeling SO SAD. In my 30s, birthdays have mostly felt sad for me, not joyful like I always hoped they would. I thinnnk I just needed to write about loneliness, though.
After I published it, my community surrounded me. Out of state friends sent me gifts. They didn’t realize I felt so alone! I don’t think I realized I felt so alone. I don’t think I realized people loved me that much. It was a lot to accept that I could share my big feelings in a blog and people would care that much.
I actually think letting people love and support you is a lot harder than you’d think.
There are so many reasons to believe we don’t deserve it.
We’re messy, judgy, problematic, inconsistent, chaotic, flailing people. And yet, people still love us in spite of that. It doesn’t really make any sense!
But, what I do know is that squishing myself down into something contained and palatable and likeable just to try to be accepted by as many people as possible feels like absolute garbage to my spirit, and it is fueled by my Outsider Wound.
The Outsider Wound is this thing I do where I am quite certain that deep down I am a failure and fuckup and no one could possibly love me if they really knew me. So, I’ll just stay here on the outside, looking in on all the shiny, happy people who definitely have something figured out that I don’t.
The Outsider Wound is a wholehearted commitment to my struggle and perpetually keeping myself on the outside of whatever good thing is happening to someone else.
It can sound like: The algorithm hates me or Somebody else is already writing about that and doing it WAY better than I ever could.
It can look like: Obsessing over metrics, writing vanilla nothingness instead of taking creative risks, and always defending yourself in the comments.
On the Internet, the Outsider Wound seems to manifest as either a commitment to being misunderstood or a deliberate chase to be understood by all. At least, those are the two poles I fling myself between when I’m trying too hard.
So, okay what the hell does any of this have to do with Substack?
The decision to commit to your self-expression — whether that means writing a Substack, doodling in your notebook, wheat-pasting your art on the abandoned warehouse wall, or finally buying that keyboard off Facebook Marketplace (like you’ve been talking about doing for 4 years) — this decision is fundamentally about choosing to put more weight behind your creative expression than the part of you that sighs and slumps its shoulders and grumbles about wHaT’s EvEn ThE pOiNt.
Because choosing your expression is a kind of delulu self-belief. And a huge part of that is letting people in and let them see more sides of you than you usually show on the gram.
And art is literally an insane thing to do when it feels like the world is crashing down around us. And yet! It’s a huge reason we’ve survived as long as we have.
We’ve been out here channelling our big feelings into works of art for literally forever. Have you read Octavia Butler and Joan Didion??? The pressure valve, remember?
I’m not here to convince you to write a Substack — I just want to offer some encouragement for your creativity. But if Substack is a form of self-expression that’s been calling to you, I just released a class you’ll like called Substack School for Creative Overthinkers.
My creative collaborator
and I put our little heads together to decode whatever sorcery we cooked up to grow 17,000 subscribers in 9 months. Hint: it has a lot to do with building something that feels really fun for you.If you want to learn how we did it, how you can get your legs under you on Substack, and what it means to build a writing practice that feels good and sustainable for you, Substack School for Creative Overthinkers is waiting.
Want to work with me directly?
🎧 The 17 Principles of Soft Ambition is a $27 audio course for women who need a pep talk and reset before they burn themselves out. It’s the stuff I wish I knew sooner about nurturing my ambition and creativity without abandoning myself or making hEaLiNg my whole personality. Get it here
🧶 Untanglings are 1:1 sessions where we’ll pull apart an area of stuckness you feel in your life, your business, or maybe just your Substack. We’ll identify the common threads that have you tangled up and find solutions to move through them with more decisiveness and clarity. Book here
See you next time,
So amazing how quickly you've grown! Congrats!! It's a huge accomplishment!
you deserve every OUNCE of the support!!!