I Quit, This Is What I Realized...
If you are thinking about doing it too, read this.
Hi friends,
This is going to be a different issue from my normal entries. The most personal letter I wrote so far because I’m at that point, and I need to share it.
If you’re still writing on Substack, keep reading because this genuinely interest you.
This is that week for me. The week where everything feels pointless. The week where everything feels heavy and the effort far outweighs the results. I’m nine months into my Substack journey, and unlike a human pregnancy, nothing has come out of it yet.
My monthly subscriber rate is less than ideals. Less than 8 new subscribers per months and most of them came from a note I shared in January. If you are thinking ”this is because I am not doing the things rights.” I hold myself accountable to these standards:
I post 3-4 notes per day sometimes even more if I’m on a roll but never skipping a day.
I wrote an article per week, and mind you, It has all the SEO technical stuff with my Google Search Console connected, so it indexes the articles right when they come out.
After all this work, things are not moving. I’m swimming upstream in a river that’s slowly freezing, watching my views sink month after month since January, my peak.
I know why I am punished like this. Is because I don’t spend as much time in the platform as I used to at the beginning of the year. ”Sorry Substack, you are not the only thing demanding attention in my life.” I already work all day in front of a screen. The last thing I want when I disconnect, is to take on another obligation of scrolling and engaging for hours on your feed.
However, this brought me some positive results. I cut down my screen time from almost 4h to roughly 2h—my all time low. A whopping 50% decline! what a win. I can use this time to read, relax, and be more present in my life. Training myself to resist the urge to reach for my phone when I’m bored.
This freedom has trade offs, one of them is my influence on Substack.
It’s not easy to see other creators who just joined boasting that a single note brought them 100 new subscribers, or that their first post got them eight paid subscribers.
I can feel it… the resentment, the envy, the anger, the frustration. These are all sentiments that rise when you’re down there, at the bottom, at the end of the pit.
I can’t see anything; no light reaches this place. The air is damp, and I have to breathe quickly because there’s not much oxygen.
I have been here before, I know how despair feels. And my friends, this is it.
This is the point where you’re faced with two options: You either quit or you keep pushing, hopping that something is going to change.
I decided to quit.
To quit whining.
To quit self-pity.
To quit blaming others.
To quit making excuses.
To quit resenting people ahead of me.
To quit mistaking slow progress for failure.
To quit expecting the world to notice my effort.
This is what I realized:
I have a mentor—the man who got me into copywriting professionally. Before meeting him, I thought marketing was something spoiled girls studied at university because they didn’t know what to do with their lives.
He showed me the art of good communication, and how important is in all aspects of life. He also been an influence for me to start writing online. And this is what I noticed:
I met him in 2024. By then, he was already seven years into writing to his email list.
Seven years.
He had been writing every single day for seven years before I even knew he existed!
This gave me perspective. Your work needs time for the right people to find you.
You have to find a way to make writing sustainable for years. This is a stamina game that rewards the ones who keep showing up after the excitement fades.
Derek says that at month 6 you want to quit:
Matt says that it takes 12-18 months to find your grip:
I know it feels pointless when no one is clapping. If you are there, remember that you are not alone. And if you made it this far, let me share the mindset that keeps me going when things get tough.
Think Long-Term
If you fix you vision in the daily grind there is a lot of noise. Most of the time it paints a picture that is not accurate. Other creators hitting a home run with one of their notes, some of your subscribers unsubscribing for some estrange reason, the platform changed their policy and suddenly became a video-first platform. This is all noise.
Detach yourself from that noise and look for stability, and the only place where you’ll find stability is in the long-term.
The people that survives are the people that set their vision in the long-term. They stop focusing on the daily changes and focus on creating the habits and actions that will bring them results in the long run.
I could be upset for not having the traction I wish I had by now, but this is not going to stop me from acting like a professional and show up every day: writing every day, publishing every day, improving every day.
I know in the long run I have a better shot at winning than someone that decided to walk away because they didn’t see the immediate results we’re trained to expect.
By shifting your mentality from the short to the long term you already play a different game—one most people don’t have the patience for. It will probably take longer than you think, so learn to enjoy every day. Because this was never about getting somewhere. It was about becoming someone.
