Another Twenty-Something With a Substack

On quitting, self-doubt, and making things for an audience of zero.

I quit my comedy class a few weeks ago. Not because I wasn’t enjoying it. I looked forward to it every week. I liked writing jokes, rehearsing my delivery, and watching people laugh (or at least pretend to).

I was posting my musings on Substack at least once a week since I created this space almost a year ago. But along with quitting my comedy class, I also stepped away from writing.

I told myself and my teacher that I was busy—and while that was true, there were also feelings I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I told my friends who were eager to attend my showcase that I had a bad case of stage fright and couldn’t carry on. However, as the weeks passed and my creative side continued to stall, I realized it was something else. Something I hadn’t been able to put my finger on.

Something shifted. Suddenly, being creative started to feel off. Almost self-indulgent. Who am I to think the world needs another person with a microphone or a Substack account and a story to tell?

During this time, I would open my phone and cycle through TikTok, until I felt like my brain was starting to rot. Then to Instagram, where I felt like I wasn’t skinny enough, pretty enough, or accomplished enough. I spent a little time on Reddit, where even the happiest and unproblematic scenarios can be dissected until they feel depressing. But I’d always come back to Substack, scrolling notes and catching up on some of my favorite writers.

The opportunity to create and share your stories with the world is now at the touch of a button. It’s inspiring, but I also feel overwhelmed at times.

Sometimes I’ll write something I really love, something that feels honest or even therapeutic, and I’ll post it into the world… and it gets one like, usually from my father. And I tell myself it shouldn’t matter, but it does, a little.

There’s a lot of talk about hacking the algorithm or optimizing for views on Substack. And I get it. It’s exciting to be seen, to have your words resonate. I’ll start scrolling through Notes or see writers with hundreds of likes and subscribers, and start to wonder: Why am I even creating? Does the world need another twenty-something girl writing about her life as if she’s the next Carrie Bradshaw?

After weeks of pulling away from sharing my thoughts, feelings, and experiences, I realized that I have had a desire to create, to tell stories, to take my thoughts and ideas and imagination and put them into words and share them since I was five years old and learned how to write a sentence. It’s silly to think that at that age I could grasp the idea of sharing my stories in hopes that someone would hear them or that I’d make a living sharing them. At that time, the enjoyment came less from showing these pieces to my teacher or parents. The joy was in the process itself. I would spend hours after school or during the summer crafting story after story, completely absorbed in it. I would record myself reading books aloud, or acting out one-woman plays that I would write, direct, and star in. I always leaned into my creative side because it brought me genuine joy.

Somewhere along the way, though, I started feeling like creating only counted if it led somewhere—a show, a post, a project, some kind of visible success. Eventually, writing became a potential career path, something I could pursue and polish and maybe even get paid for.

While I loved investigating the latest “breaking news” at my high school or poring over sentence structure in English class, something shifted after I graduated.

If I wasn’t being paid to do it, or published somewhere people might actually read it, did it still count? Was it still worth doing? I don’t have the answer for that, but I do know this: I feel most like myself when I’m creating, whether that’s telling bad jokes at an open mic or writing a Substack only a handful of people will read.

I don’t know if I’ll write another joke or finally finish my novel or post on Substack again, but I know that making things, even if it’s just for me, is never wasted.