Measuring What Can’t Be Measured

On writing, validation, and the quiet pull to be seen

A few days into being on Substack, I realized something that should have been obvious.

I’ve spent far too much time thinking about where to publish, and not enough time asking what I actually want from my writing.

My website sits in a quiet corner of the internet. It never drew much attention. But the people who did find it felt like my people. Mostly people I knew, or people adjacent to them.

Substack feels different. Louder. More crowded. Like moving from a small town to New York City. And it raises a simple question.

How do I find more of my people in a place like this?

I could change the message. Broaden it. Try to make it appeal to more people. But that doesn’t appeal to me, and it doesn’t guarantee anything.

At every turn, there’s an endless stream of people trying to stand out. I have no desire to be that guy standing in the middle of a busy street yelling for attention as people rush past.

But on some level, that’s the business of writing. And it is unlikely to change.

I’ve spent most of my career in sales and customer-facing roles. I understand the importance of standing out. And by most objective measures, I was successful at it. At least on paper.

But it never quite felt the way I expected it to.

No matter what I achieved, there was always something just out of reach. Some version of “enough” that I never quite got to.

Which makes this question about Substack feel familiar.

Because it isn’t really about Substack. It’s about what I want my second act to be.

The first was performative. It was filled with the things that needed to be accomplished. Raise a family. Buy a home. Put food on the table. It required a certain way of showing up, and I got good at it.

But it never quite fulfilled me.

And then everything fell apart.

My marriage. My career. My family.

All at once. For one reason.

I lost track of what mattered. What I was actually working for.

I learned from that. Picked up the pieces and told myself I wouldn’t lose sight of it again.

And now, in a quieter way, I find myself facing something similar with my writing.

I’m spending too much time thinking about how to be seen. How to stand out in a crowded space. The same kinds of questions I spent a career learning how to answer.

I understand what it takes. I can see how to do it.

And I know what I’m unwilling to sacrifice in the process.

Writing my memoir, Seeing Clearly, made that clear. It forced me to confront parts of myself I had spent years avoiding. Long before I finished it, I knew that as an unknown author without a large platform, a traditional publisher wasn’t a real option. So I self-published it.

That decision came with a cost, both financial and in readership.

And I’d make that trade every time.

Now I’m working on a novel.

I recently read Is Fiction Publishing Losing its Faith in Storytelling? by Mark Gottlieb. In it, he notes that publishers are increasingly asking not just “Is this good?” but “How will this sell?”, placing more weight on the size of an author’s platform than on the writing itself. More concerning, he points out that this expectation, once reserved for nonfiction, is now making its way into fiction as well.

His piece landed harder than I expected. And yet, it wasn’t a surprise.

Halfway through the second draft of my novel, it’s already something I feel proud of. Something I believe could connect with a lot of people.

And I’m faced with the reality of building a platform a publisher will find attractive, or choosing a different path entirely.

Which brings me back to a simpler question.

Do I actually want to do what it takes to be seen?

And for me, that leads somewhere else entirely. Not to how I publish, but to why I write.

I know what it isn’t.

It’s not about income. I’m not naive enough to say success wouldn’t be welcome. Of course it would. But that’s not what has me sitting at this keyboard or spending hours each day working on a novel.

I’m fortunate. I had a career that gave me the freedom to spend my time this way. And I do it because I want to.

Which brings me back to the question I keep asking.

Why?

Because there’s a part of me that recognizes that pattern. The part that knows how to perform, how to adapt, how to do what’s required to get the outcome.

But today, the difference is that I can see how much time I spent chasing something I could never catch.

Validation.

I’ve been looking for it in one form or another for most of my life. And as I write that, it sounds ridiculous.

I have plenty of it. From people close to me. From a career that, objectively, was successful. From relationships that matter. There’s no shortage of evidence.

But it always feels just out of reach.

My mind goes straight to comparison. To people who have done more, built more, reached more. And whatever I’ve done starts to feel smaller by comparison.

That’s me measuring the wrong things. But old habits die hard.

I’ve spent a lot of my life measuring things. Outcomes, progress, success. Numbers make it easy. Dollars, titles, growth.

But the things that actually shape a life can’t be measured.

Friendship. Love. Contentment. Peace.

Writing has helped me connect with that truth, and others like it. The act of looking inward, sorting through the noise, and putting it into words is how I make sense of things in my life.

And that’s why I write.

Which leaves me in a strange place.

I can see what it would take to succeed as a writer in this environment.

And at the same time, I can see how quickly I could find myself chasing validation in the one place I’ll never find it.

Clicks. Likes. Sales. Star ratings.

And behind all of it, a novel I hope to one day sell.

Which means the pull toward validation will still be there.