The price is the grind
TL;DR:
Looking back on five silent months, I share how consistency, and a written list of your past wins can help when silence feels like rejection.
After 47 posts, I decided to take a breather from publishing in English for a month maximum. Depending on where you're reading this (newsletter, blog via Instagram/Facebook, Substack), it'll mean different things for you. None of the channels will receive new planned posts, although I might not be able to hold my creative horses back and might finish an article swirling in my head, nonetheless.
I'll remain active on Substack, to continue to support your work by being engaged with it. I have articles in the works and dozens of ideas to write about, but I must make a responsible decision to focus on where my presence is more needed.
That means I'll be writing more in Hungarian to support the prenatal class we will launch with my wife within a month – before you misread this, only my wife will do the teaching; I'll help expectant parents through group coaching to strengthen their relationship before their child arrives. There's already a demand for that, and I just can't ignore it. I'll also be busy with offline networking events and soon venture into podcasting with an old colleague. I won't have time to sit on my hands, while I will do my best to stay emotionally available to my wife, child, and myself. But I didn't want to disappear into thin air, so here's my nudge to you to help you keep going. It's about consistency and rejection, and I hope it will help you change your perspective.
Hopeful commitment
I'm addicted to hope.
I'm stubborn and persistent like a wolf when it has its eyes on a bison, even in knee-deep snow. My addiction to hope is my fuel. I know there's a way, and I'm willing to move the actual bison bare-handed to find it.
Hope doesn't let me dwell.
My hope is not naively selfish, though. I set my mind to help people reach their goals. I just needed a device to let them find me.
When I started to publish my thoughts, I hoped that my articles would find their readers naturally. I was naive at first and ignored the distribution. I kept writing for the void, hoping the algorithm wizard would give me a hand because it saw that my heart was pure and my intentions were clear.
Well, that didn't happen.
After publishing four articles on my blog and distributing them via Instagram and Facebook without receiving any feedback, I started to look for the nearest bison to move, naturally leading me to Substack and Medium.
I didn't know how either of them worked.
Hope was still on my side, and I believed that the wizard was real; I just needed to put my thoughts out there, and readers would gather around like a flock. After the dry spell, I started to receive feedback. Eye-watering feedback that told me how much readers felt after reading my thoughts. They started to tell me that they had real-life conversations offline with their partners/friends/families, inspired by my writing.
I felt at peace.
I wanted to induce feelings and deliver writing that meant something to readers. But I made a mistake. Slowly, I lost focus on what was more important and started to focus on chasing growth. I wanted the void to release me.
Silence as a mirror
The silence of my void was deafening for five months. Five. I kid you not; nobody caught a whiff of what I had to say. The silence was understandable because I started to publish in English in a country where, to this day, it's not normal to consume content in English. The quality wasn't perfect either. They say you must write your first 100 posts to start writing something worth reading. My counter still sits at 47.
I almost quit every month because nothing made sense.
But I've always been good with silence. Have you seen The Dark Knight Rises?
"Oh, you think darkness is your ally? But you merely adopted the dark; I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding! The shadows betray you, because they belong to me!"
I'm the same with silence; I just happen to use it to help people.
Despite being comfortable with silence, I do keep on reflecting on what's happening with my execution; I'm not a megalomaniac criminal, after all.
In the beginning, my voice was confident that I could find a topic that would hit the nail on the head. Confident self-talk turns into insanity if there's no proof to back it up, and I had none. Something had to change, because opening the apps to see no change almost turned into the question: why bother?
There's a major difference between the silence I hold for my clients and the one I must sit with, alone, after hitting publish.
My mind started to play a trick on me by smudging self-worth and growth together, and I let it. I was mesmerized by my comparable growth-open-engagement-conversation rates and lost track of what was important. Ethically inducing feelings. I mean, I still communicated ethically, but my goal shifted toward growth instead of starting conversations.
When growth slowed down, I started to question everything in silence. Was it me? Was it the topic? The style? The language?
It was more artificial than that.
Sobering self-doubt
I sat in the void for too long, and it was entirely my fault. I didn't account for the requirement for me to be visible on a given platform; I hoped the wizard would take care of that. It turns out I was the wizard all along.
You know this by now, but let's make this clear.
If you're not active in other people's gardens, nobody will know about yours. Unless you use well-known cheesy tactics or say something blatantly unhinged that spreads like wildfire. Neither is bad, but you have to make a decision.
In the beginning, I made none.
I stood in front of the bison that exhaled slowly, letting me catch my breath for a moment, but I wasn't sure when the chase was going to continue.
The self-doubt started to become personal. I kept seeing people contemplating how all the platforms are about growth tactics and "how-to" articles, questioning where the personal essayists are, and I was looking at them like, "Well, hello, I'm right here," while nobody applauded my genius for going against all the grains I could ruffle.
Meanwhile, I kept seeing void friends' accounts blow up almost overnight while others jumped ship after fewer months than I spent inside the void.
That’s a different kind of loneliness, you know.
Remembered resilience
This is not my first rodeo, though, but my fourth. I know what it takes to be consistent for a decade because I had to do it three times already.
First, when I played basketball semi-professionally. I didn't win anything for eight years. We won matches, sure, but that only qualifies for participation trophies, and I was a competitor. I quit four times only to go back again for the fifth time and finally won my first gold medal afterward.
Second, I have known resilience since my previous decade-long tech career. I started way underpaid for the testing and other responsibilities I had fulfilled, but it was all my fault. I didn't know what my work was worth, so I didn't ask. I almost quit back then too, right at the beginning, after a year in my career. My saner judgment to stick with it and drive to learn how to navigate a tech career better led me to a corporate program management gig my inner circle could only nod to. It burned me out, but I drove my career to success.
Lastly, my relationship with my wife. This week was the tenth anniversary of our relationship; our five-year anniversary was back in May. In the beginning, it was not at all sure that we should build a life together. I remember people asking us why we bothered at all if we kept on arguing. We always put our hearts on the table, and we did not shy away from conflict. We wanted everything resolved, which meant that we ground more than most couples.
You know what the common thread was? I stick with everything, with consistency.
I published 47 articles in a stretch of 44 weeks. I'd say that's consistent, and I'll be publishing at least four if not five within the next three weeks, just not here. I appreciate, however, that this is merely the beginning of it all on this path for me.
There's one last thing that's on my side. I'm just a little over 30. I'm still incredibly young. Even if I plan with the global life expectancy for men, which is 71, I still have more than 35 years to find a way to move my bison. I'm more patient than I seem sometimes.
Quiet recommitment
I have always found a way forward. There always is. I'm not trying to be a pioneer in visiting Jupiter or anything. Although a bison might seem frighteningly tall (5 to 6.5 feet, or 1.5 to 2 meters), I'm just as tall with my 6.5 feet, or 2 meters.
I promised you a nudge before I step away, and that's my ask of you: to lean into your own silence, which you might be mistaking for rejection yourself.
You might not be seeing a resource that you have right under your nose. Pull up a pen and paper and list everything you've done so far where you became successful by your own standards. There must be at least one if you're able to read this article. I mean it. Put your phone away, sit down, and think in silence. List them relentlessly until you can't answer the question "What else?" anymore.
Three times the charm. Seriously.
When you have all your achievements laid out in front of you, try to look for the connection. What do they have in common? What do you remember from when it used to be difficult for you to get over that specific challenge? How did you solve it? What helped you get ahead? Write your answers down again and let yourself go freestyle if you feel the pull. Give some good thought to what you have in front of you.
If you're in a similar five months yourself, please know it's probably not about you; it might be that you're simply invisible. There's no wizard behind the curtain; you must take matters into your own hands if you want to deliver change for your own audience in the beginning. You're tall enough for your own bison too.
The feedback that started to trickle in proved that readers found real value in my writing, so there are people out there who want to read me. I just hadn't found most of them yet.
It took a tanker full of willpower to keep myself going, and I'm persistent like that. You might read this as disappointment after I started to see some level of success that other void friends are still just hoping to reach.
I'm not disappointed. I'm aware of how burnout works works. It depends on me and my ability to keep the flame alive without implosion.
This is me chasing another bison that has budged.
But I can't sustain both at the same time, and my heart is bleeding for it as I've started to see the momentum. I'll be back, take care until then, and try to focus on what you've already achieved; the resources are already there.
You'll see me in your notifications all the same.
It’s perfectly okay to ask for support. You don’t have to figure everything out on your own. While I believe everyone is their own best expert, I’m also a big believer in asking for help to create change together. It’s comforting to have someone by our side as we go through transitions. If you’re feeling motivated to expand your comfort zone and curious about how I can support you on your journey, let’s talk.
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