Nobody Cares

The general wisdom is that it shouldn’t matter if no one cares what you do. You should do things based on intrinsic motivations rather than extrinsic ones. In other words, you shouldn’t do things based on the validation from others—you should do things based on your own self motivation.

Doing things for the sake of doing them and feeling good about doing them is a beautiful thing. It’s wonderful to draw, take photos, write, make music, or build software—not because of the outcome, but because of the process. Not for the destination, but for the journey.

That’s all true, but that’s what hobbies are for.

Having a hobby is great precisely because it’s a thing you can do where no one needs to care that you do it in order to feel good about doing it. Nobody needs to know that you do it. You don’t need to share it on social media. You don’t need to monetize it.

The problem is that we have side-hustled every hobby, so even though we know we aren’t necessarily attempting to be professional writers, artists, programmers, or rock climbers, we live in a culture now where everything you do is potentially an opportunity for passive income.

We’ve been told to work and build in public. To be our own brand. To create content. But at the same time we’re told to not care if our work is not that great. To not care about what others think. We’re told not to care about building an audience. But you can’t really do that with a hobby.

If you’re an amateur at something with aspirations to be really good at a thing and potentially make money from it, other people need to care.

There’s no way around this. Other people have to care. You need the external validation not just for ego reasons, but for practical reasons. Other people need to find what you do valuable in order for them to give you attention or money.

I’m currently having this exact conflict. I want to keep writing here, even though I have no audience, but I don’t want to care about not having an audience, but it still bothers me that I don’t. It's a conundrum.

I moved from Medium to Ghost, bought a domain name, with the hope of building a bigger audience and maybe earning a little income.

But every month that $12 bill from Digital Ocean reminds me that no one is paying attention yet.

I’m still not sure what I’ll do next.

Perhaps writing is unique in that it can be a hobby, but you need at least a few people to care to help you keep going.