Dance Moves And Costumes

Someone posted a Substack note last week pleading with writers to publish the first 10 essays just for themselves. They’d done it, proclaimed with pride and empiricism that writing for themself, in public, became a singular act of defiance against their default programming. In a self-authored twist of fate, they broke an 8 year pattern of self-persecution and crippling procrastination. How did they do it?

Post after post, Mr or Mrs Substacker wrote only the words that felt resonant and came easy. No algorithm hacking. No tried and true templates. Just straight up vibes. And through the process gained a small army of true fans. That story continues to be a beacon of hope. A lighthouse in the rhythmically dark shores of procrastination. And if you have an urge to reach the coast, I wanted to give you my own experience.

September 2025

Before publishing the first essay of The Buffering in over a year, the indistinct chatter of the virtual town square sounded like a crowd waiting to hang someone. Rejection is a close cousin of death because somewhere in our evolutionary history we learned that being cast out of the tribe didn’t end well. The writing needed to be polished. It needed to have a good hook, I confessed. It had to… d d d -- d d d…

A litany of feel bad rules twisted me from the inside out.

All the pressure came from thinking I needed to be reproachable from the start. I had to go from 0 to 100mph in a single pass. And if anyone was to take me seriously, it needed to be objectively badass. I found myself doing a sort of embodied incantation to the Substack gods through each draft.

My behaviour hinged on the premise the more I suffer, the more good faith I deserve. I have sacrificed my serotonin, accept me!

Rich Roll sums up what might be a fallacy.

“I still find myself with this sense that success has to be earned. And the only way to earn it is to inflict pain on yourself. And if you’re not in pain you didn’t try hard enough. And it would have been better if you’d suffered more. And I think that’s a lie, and I want to find out if it’s a lie or if it’s true”.

I think it’s a half lie at best.

I just think it’s just easier to be angry than courageous. It’s not the work is better when you’re running on toxic fuel, but it’s more reliable, more certain, more familiar.

But that’s a different topic.

As far as I can tell, the real world rewards people based on their output, and the markets general observation (or association) of the person or company to traits that matter, like trust or happiness.

Action and optics make sense to the outside. Or put another way, product and marketing.

But our own critical internal struggle? Nobody else can experience the inner texture of your mind.

So we’re left with dance moves and costumes. You get to decide the dance you’re doing and the costume you’re wearing. The product (the dance), and the marketing (costume). And, if you try to enjoy the music, the dance moves usually get better. So if you can help it, try to open your heart and get swept up by the melody.

I was suffering, and so the work suffered too. I hadn’t factored that in to my suffer more → deserve more algorithm.

So I started to drink from the small bottle of potion and pursue a white hot rush of literary promiscuity.

When I started, I didn’t clock writing as a route towards acceptance or accolade. Writing has always been a constant and the best way I know to think clearly. So, why write in public as if I’m doing anything more than simply adventuring through my wonderings, and wanting to see just how far the rabbit hole goes?

Fast forward to 2026, and the new algorithm is producing results. Most mornings I write for 2 hours and it’s the highlight of my working day.

I still have to work with my biology.

The thoughts rarely come out smoothly. Even now, I face a social and biological imperative to filter. It’s a continual bottleneck that squeezes me back into writing prohibitively. So, each morning I have to, once again, drink the potion and hope by chance I find my way to writing something of substance.

Not just a fling.

As an author, it’s my duty to try to satisfy your eyes. But I’m not so sure you’re after a casual affair. You need me, or some other soon-to-be favourite writer, to keep making the kind of stuff able to give you a fix. I keep coming back to the same writers not because they’re the hottest new piece, but because I’ve grown fond of the little pieces of them. Not because any singular essay is hauntingly beautiful, but because I like our relationship. They see the world in similar ways to me, and I can trust them.

So, the best I can do is keep trying to straighten out the creases of my mind, write paragraphs that make my brain fizzle and pop, and hope it causes the same reaction in you.

If you’re a Creative, make stuff you like. Enjoy the process for a year or two.

Keep practicing and getting feedback and refining. Find people to collaborate with. Go deep on a single topic, or write widely. I’m not trying to convince you that I have a system to being an overnight success. But I’ve figured out the system for guaranteeing 10 year failure. Build your life on top of habits you don’t actually like.

Instead, make something you like. Then make something you like, but a bit better. Limit the hours you spend making things you hate.