Hitting 1,000 Subscribers led to an Existential Crisis

Unwittingly, I'd become focused on the numbers. Hitting 1,000 subscribers had the unexpected outcome of helping me reappraise what I'm doing here on Substack.

The world today encourages us to set big goals and strive with all our being to achieve those goals. But what happens when we finally get there? What if we find the world at the top of that mountain isn’t full of milk and honey after all? What if there’s just another mountain on the other side?

I hadn’t even consciously set 1,000 subscribers as particular goal for this newsletter. It wasn’t something I thought I was fixating on. So when I hit that number just after Christmas and felt a feeling of disillusionment I was very much surprised!

I wasn’t only surprised by my feelings but also that I had been subconsciously driven by those numbers in the background and focused on the ticking upwards towards the big four figure mark.

The strange thing is, it IS a great achievement. I’ve been plugging away at this newsletter now for just over 18 months, I’ve written around 100,000 words across 95 posts and I’ve stuck diligently a cadence of publishing one post a week every week for all that time…