Hot take: hitting 1000 subscribers on my writing blog was kind of a letdown

I mean everyone acts like hitting that first 1k is this huge deal, but when I actually got there last Thursday it just felt like a number. Nobody in my real life cared and I was still staring at the same blank page the next day trying to finish a story about a haunted laundromat. Has anyone else felt like milestones are way overhyped for creative work?

3 comments

3 Comments

kim.dylan15d ago

Oh man, do I ever feel this? I hit 1k on my short story page a few months back and honestly it felt like nothing changed. I was still refreshing my stats every hour and nobody in my real life even knew what it meant. The next day I sat down to write and it was the same struggle as before, just with a bigger number next to my name. I think the build up is way more exciting than the actual moment because you hype yourself up thinking it will fix everything, but it never does. My haunted laundromat story is still sitting half finished too, so I totally get that blank page feeling. Honestly though, I think stuff like that just means we actually care about the work more than the numbers, even when it sucks.

the_reese15d ago

That 1k milestone is cool and all, but I don't know why everyone acts like it's some life changing thing. I've got a buddy who hit 2k on his poetry page and all it did was make him even more anxious about the next post flopping. The whole "the build up is more exciting" thing is true but also kind of a trap if you ask me. You spend all this energy chasing a number that doesn't actually mean anything in the real world, and then when you get it you're just right back where you started except now you're worried about keeping it up. Maybe it's just me, but I think people put way too much pressure on these arbitrary goals. Like, is it really that deep, or are we just addicted to the dopamine hit of seeing that number go up?

betty1445d ago

Gotta say I see it a little different. Hitting 1k on my crime fiction blog last month actually did feel like something real, not because my neighbors threw me a parade but because it meant 1,000 people somewhere bothered to click a button saying they wanted to see what I wrote next. That's 1,000 more than had ever cared before. The haunted laundromat story you mention, maybe it's still sitting half finished because you're writing it for yourself and not for that number, which is a good thing, but the milestone is still proof that someone out there wants to read it when you're done. Isn't that worth something even if the dopamine hit fades?