It’s been a full decade since I started my blog Go Do, and writing consistently hasn’t gotten any easier. In fact, it feels harder than ever before.

Lately, I’ve been struggling hard with my writing practice. I’ve been getting up at the ass crack of dawn to make time to write before work, yet when I sit down to do it, I procrastinate. I’ve always been excited about the idea of writing, but when I settle into my favourite cushy chair at my go-to coffee shop, I immediately open my email. Then I check in on how my investments are doing. Then I update my daily budgeting spreadsheet. Then, after half an hour goes by, I need to give myself a kick in the butt to just start. I ain’t waking up at 4am to do admin work.

Ten years in and man, it’s still hard as hell.

Once I get going, I can usually write for an hour, maybe an hour and a half before fatigue sets in. But there are also many days where each sentence feels like pulling teeth—where I just stare into the abyss for a while, before my monkey mind pulls me into a swift pivot: opening email or Instagram, looking for a quick dopamine hit to soothe the severe discomfort of abandoning the work that really matters…and that’s the end of today’s writing session.

While I’ve been contributing to my blog for a decade now, it hasn’t been consistent. I’ll take months off at a time, then come back with a bang and write almost every day for a month. Then I take another long break and find it nearly impossible to get back at it. I get pulled in so many directions, and writing tends to get pushed to the bottom of my priority list for a while.

But writing is the one thing I always return to. No matter how much time has passed, I come back, tail between my legs, guilty for abandoning such a soul-nourishing activity. It’s the most difficult practice I’ve tried to sustain in my life, but the most necessary one.

I love the feeling of a finished piece, putting it out into the world, but the labour of writing sucks a lot of the time. As Gloria Steinem once said, “I do not like to write—I like to have written.” Working out every day? No problem. But writing… ughhhhhhhhhh.

I’ve read lots of blogger success stories where keeping at it skyrockets people into fame, where money and the most sought-after reward—a book deal—becomes their reality. What I haven’t stumbled across much are failed blogs, or people like me who have been at it for quite some time, but whose results are mediocre at best.

Over the last decade, I’ve written dozens of articles and published a book. I’ve had some success—a few viral pieces here, a few brand partnerships there—but not enough to sustain a life in the expensive city of Vancouver, BC (Bring Cash). I never truly expected writing to support me financially, but that reality meant I had to divert my attention elsewhere. I started a  digital agency with a former colleague and good pal, and it’s been lucrative. As the business grows, however, my time for writing continues to shrink.

One of the main reasons we de-prioritize writing is because it isn’t the most profitable path. My writing coach once said there’s a better chance of getting struck by lightning than getting published. And at the end of the day, we all need to reach a financial baseline just to cover our living expenses, or our creativity begins to suffer. It’s hard to focus on creating when you don’t know how you’re going to pay rent next month.

Blogger and author, Nat Eliason wrote about a similar experience where “shiny objects” (good money), continued to pull him away from writing—the very thing he always returned to. He realized that many of his other pursuits were never the goal in themselves, but simply a way to support his writing:

It took a while for me to realize that all of this other work was originally just to support being able to write. I started making courses to support writing. I started the agency to be able to write. I went into crypto because I was scared of not making enough money writing. But at some point I forgot that. I went past the number I needed to justify putting money back on cruise control, and kept accumulating more and more. I got hooked on it.

Every writer wants to write full-time. But every writer I know also wants to earn a decent income in order to survive in this expensive world. So if we’re not making money from writing, yet can’t seem to stop writing, there must be something else that keeps pulling us back.

---

For me, writing is a relentless calling. If I’m not writing, I feel guilty. When I do write, there’s little time left for anything else because producing something good takes so much energy and focus. Do I earn more now so I can write more in the future? Or do I earn a decent salary and try to balance writing with my business, training, reading, and all my other interests and hobbies? 

If you’re an existing or aspiring creator, artist, or writer, or someone who’s been at it for a while with little to show for it—this one’s for you. Here are some key lessons I’ve learned over the last decade of creating something from nothing and continuing on even when the world doesn’t really seem to care all that much.

---

Keep shouting into the void

When you’re first starting out, sharing your work is terrifying. The thought of people being mean, rejecting our ideas, or starting internet arguments feels unbearable for us artists—we’re sensitive souls. No wonder so many people never muster the courage to share anything they create publicly. It’s terrifying.

My sister, who works in influencer marketing, once told me that to be a creator, you need really thick skin. It ain’t for the faint of heart, that’s for sure. When you share a piece you wrote, a video you created, a business you started, a product you made, or art you hand-crafted, you’re sharing a part of yourself—and that’s scary as hell.

There’s so much vulnerability in putting yourself out there like that. I’ve received some negative feedback over the years, but the most painful response is indifference; when you publish something you’ve been working on for days, weeks, or even months, and the result is… crickets. No attention. Not even negative attention.

It can sting. But that’s just the way it goes. No matter how accomplished you are, not every piece you create is going to land. We’re going to have wins and losses, but you can only get the wins if you keep showing up and getting your stuff out there.

You have to keep shouting into the void, even when everything in your being is saying, what the hell is the point?

Which leads me to my next key lesson:

---

Write for one person

When slaving away on an article and not knowing how it would perform, I kept one thing in mind: write for a single person. If my piece resonated with just one individual—helped them through a problem in their life, made them think differently about something, or inspired them to take action on a goal that mattered to them—then the effort was well worth it.

I think we all deeply want to contribute to this world, and creating and sharing is a powerful way to do that. You have the ability to impact someone else’s life. You’ve gone through your own unique hardships and experiences. You’ve lived life. You’ve failed. You’ve been beaten down. You’ve struggled. You’ve felt defeated. You’ve gotten caught up in the comparison game. That alone is more than enough content to share with the world.

If you show up authentically—not writing primarily for money or attention, but to genuinely help someone else, it shows. Authenticity eclipses AI and is now the rarest, most valuable asset you can own.

So replace writing for attention, traffic, shares, and moola with writing for one person. See how your motivation to show up to your practice changes. See how your enjoyment shifts. See how much more writing means to you.

---

Pieces your most proud of might be your worst performers

Some of the articles I was most proud of and the ones I worked hardest on, no one gave a shit about. Meanwhile, articles I felt were some of my worst work performed best in search engines.

I once wrote a crap article about a 16:8 intermittent fasting experiment, and it drove 80% of my site traffic for an entire year. I also discovered that articles that performed well on my blog didn’t necessarily do well on Medium, and vice versa.

You might find a formula for what works and try to beat it into the ground, but the world will still surprise you. Feedback from your audience matters, and sometimes we do have to play with algorithms a bit. But at the end of the day, it’s your art. You have to write about what you want to write about—what you’re curious about and what excites you. Otherwise, it’s going to suck.

Which leads me to this next piece of advice:

---

Don’t only write about one niche, unless you really want to

Everyone nowadays talks about finding a niche and creating only for that niche. When I first started my blog, I mostly wrote about running, but over time, it got boring. So I began testing the waters in other subjects too: entrepreneurship, reading, writing, philosophy, and different forms of fitness.

I’m not a one-dimensional gal, so why limit myself to a single direction?

James Clear is the “habit guy,” Ryan Holiday is the “stoic guy,” and Yung Pueblo is the “relationship guy.” Being an authoritative voice in a niche can be lucrative. But do you really want to pigeonhole yourself into one arena? If that excites you, great. But my bet is that if you’re a curious, multi-faceted person, it will lose its pizzazz after a while.

Alex Hutchinson writes about this in his new book, The Explorer’s Gene:

Endure did unexpectedly well. It scraped briefly onto the New York Times bestseller list, and it positioned me perfectly to brand myself as “the science of endurance guy” and milk that role for the rest of my life.

But something didn’t feel quite right. [My] decade of reporting for Endure had been a period of continual discovery, as I learned about new and new-to-me developments in biology, physiology, psychology, and other disciplines. By 2024 though, I was mostly caught up with the current state of knowledge. A future of reporting exclusively on those same topics would mean waiting for rare incremental advances and rehashing ideas I’d already written about. The spark of learning something new was gone.

Hutchinson wanted to explore new territory—untraversed terrain. He dropped out of his PhD to pursue a career in journalism, and that swift pivot paid off. In his words, it “led to the most rewarding professional years of my life.”

When thinking about the next direction for his creative work, Hutchinson felt that following the same urge might yield the same rewards again. With his success, he could have milked the Endure cow for a while. Instead, he chose exploration, curiosity, and adventure With this new route, maybe it would pay off financially. Maybe it wouldn’t. But no matter the outcome, it would pay off spiritually—and that, my friends, is what matters most.

You can follow the template. You can chase the proven path to success. Or you can move in a direction that genuinely excites you. Whether that fits neatly into a niche or not, who cares?

Follow the curiosity. Follow the excitement. And create for yourself—at least from time to time.

---

Trying to make a living from writing may destroy your love for writing

“One of the easiest ways to hate something you love is to turn it into your job: taking the thing that keeps you alive spiritually and turning it into the thing that keeps you alive literally.”—Austin Kleon, Keep Going⁠

I never wanted blogging to feel like a job or an obligation. Framing writing as a hobby took the pressure off and made it fun again. I got to play around and get messy, as Miss Frizzle always says. There was no pressure to perform or to pay the bills with my words.

Austin Kleon was right when he said that turning your passion into your breadwinning is “dangerous territory.” The creative profession is notoriously difficult to make a decent living from.

In a 2013 piece in the Contemporary Art Issue magazine, a study found that 85% of artists make less than $25,000 per year, 10% earn $25,000-$100,000 per year, and 5% are the top earners (4% $100 -$1 mill, and 1% > $1 mill). Accounting for inflation, $25,000 or less is not nearly enough to live on in this economy, let alone cover basic necessities. 

Magnus Resch, author of How to Become a Successful Artist wrote, “The average female artist in Berlin has an annual income of $10,000; a degree in fine art is the least valued major in the US; success is defined by an exclusive network of white men. Meanwhile, women, people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community rarely see the same opportunities.” 

Resch’s research also showed that 45% of artists don’t make any income at all from their art. So if you’ve been working your ass off for years trying to make a creative life work, I really feel for you. I’ve been trying too, and I wish I could tell you I made it out the other side. Sadly, I’m in the same bracket as most others.

I’ve come to realize that my writing may never support me financially, and that I’ll likely need to earn income elsewhere. Starting a digital marketing agency has bought me some time and flexibility in my day to do the things I love, but I’ve never been able to devote the amount of energy and focus I truly want to my writing. Until I reach full financial independence, I’ll have to keep making it work as best I can, alongside my day job.

Elizabeth Gilbert shared a similar sentiment in Big Magic: 

I [promised] that I would never ask writing to take care of me financially, but that I would always take care of it—meaning that I would always support us both, by any means necessary. I did not ask for any external rewards for my devotion; I just wanted to spend my life as near to writing as possible—forever close to that source of all my curiosity and contentment—and so I was willing to make whatever arrangements needed to be made in order to get by.

We might become a big success from our writing, but I’m not counting on it. The only thing I can do is continue to contribute, be generous with what I give away, and like any other hobby, try my best to make time for it.

---

Stop comparing and consuming, and start creating.

“Art is about the maker. It’s aim: to be an expression of who we are.This makes competition absurd. Every artist’s playing field is specific to them.” – Rick Rubin

I know, I know—it’s inevitable. We read other people’s work. We scroll through social media, endlessly consuming content. People’s lives are on display: their bank balances that are exponentially bigger than ours, the beautiful places they’ve traveled that have been on our wish list for a decade, the number of copies their latest book sold while ours was sentenced to mediocrity prison, and their accomplishments and success broadcast loudly for all to see.

We can’t help but feel small, no matter how accomplished we are by traditional standards.

The times in my life when I stopped creating were the same times I was consuming far more than I was producing. My girlfriend said something that really stuck with me. As a writer, creator, and coach, she told me that when she’s creating content and course material, she needs to put on “blinders.” Her rule is simple: always create more than you consume.

If your consumption-to-creation ratio is 10:1, 100:1, or even 5:1, try to make it 1:1 or less. And that usually means staying off social media as much as possible. Sure, there are places to draw inspiration and even do some market research into what content performs well. But be honest with yourself about how you’re using that information. Is it helping you or making you feel like a pile of trash? Most of the time, it’s the latter.

The big caveat here is to consume quality content. Read books and blogs that offer genuine value and aren’t just trying to sell you something at the end. Learn to distinguish between performative content and educational content. Listen to audiobooks and podcasts, or watch YouTube videos that are information-rich rather than attention-driven.

Use social media sparingly. Because if you’re anything like me, you’ll get sucked into the comparison game within two minutes on the platform, and your creativity and motivation will plummet into a creator’s worst hell: paralysis.

---

Learn to love other’s work.  Creating is a “communal act”

“Writers are great lovers. They fall in love with other writers. That’s how they learn to write. They take on a writer, read everything by [them], read it over again until they understand how the writer moves, pauses, and sees. That’s what being a lover is: stepping out of yourself, stepping into someone else’s skin.”–Natalie Goldman , Writing Down the Bones

I’m guilty of feeling inadequate when I read something truly great. But you know what I’ve found helpful? Instead of feeling jealous, I reach out to the author (if they’re still living). I tell them how their work impacted me. I share it. I quote it in my own writing or try to build on the concepts, making sure I give proper attribution for any ideas I borrow. I recommend their books to people who might benefit. I study their style and try to apply the parts I admire most to my own writing.

And just like that, my jealousy and feelings of inadequacy begin to dissolve.

Don’t merely consume the work of others. Contribute back to the world with what you learn. You’re not being a copycat; you’re sharing ideas through your own lens and unique perspective.

Writers share with other writers. Authentic writers exchange ideas and give credit where it’s due. Narcissistic writers take ideas from others and pass them off as their own. Don’t be the latter.

Be kind to other writers, especially beginners who are just getting started. A single comment on their work can be the fuel that keeps them going. The messages, emails, and kindness that complete strangers have shown me over the years have been invaluable in my blogging journey.

Reciprocate that generosity, and I can guarantee it will enhance your creative practice in more ways than you could possibly imagine.

---

Writing is an endurance sport

When you first start training for a marathon, you don’t go out and run the full 42.2 km on day one. You have to start small. Real small. Maybe that means a 5–10 minute run, then slowly working your way up to 2 km, 5 km, 10 km, 21 km, and eventually 30 km+ over the course of many months.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a seasoned athlete or starting for the very first time. With any new training plan, you have to build gradually. Sure, our baselines may be different, but the mindset is the same: start small.

The same goes for writing. If you’ve never written before, sitting down for an hour will likely feel torturous—and you won’t want to do it again.

But starting with five or ten minutes? That’s far more digestible.

To build endurance, you have to move slowly and consistently. The same goes for writing endurance. I started my blog during a 10 km-a-day running challenge I was doing for the month of January. Each day, I would run 10 km, then write about the run and publish it on my blog. The content wasn’t good, but it got me into the habit of writing and hitting “publish” every day.

Now, I prefer to write longer pieces (like this one), but I never try to write an entire article in one stretch. I try to set aside time each day to chip away at it. That’s how you build real confidence in your practice.

Performance coach and author, Steve Magness wrote in a Linkedin post that we’re better able to deal with uncertainty around results because “[we’ve] put in the reps.” Writing may not get any easier—but that’s exactly why endurance athletes love their sport so much: it’s hard as hell. We writers also love a good challenge. 

---

Just go for it

If you’re reading this, you likely have a laptop, phone, or computer nearby. Jot something down in your notes app and put it out there. How did your workout go today? What did you struggle with? What’s something you had no idea how to do, but figured out anyway? What’s something you learned recently that you wish you’d known ten years ago?

The number of topics to write about is truly endless.

You might decide to publish it. Or you might decide to keep it just for yourself and be quietly creative for a while. I have many, many blog posts, social media drafts, and even an entire 100,000-word manuscript buried in a folder on my desktop. I still struggle with sharing, and oddly enough, the more I publish, the harder it gets.

The main ethos of my blog Go Do is simple: turn ideas into action. We’ve got one life, my friend. Ideas are a commodity in today’s world, but action will always be a rare asset.

On my first date with my now-girlfriend, I was impressed by the audience she built and the courses she created. I asked her what drove her. Her reply surprised me: “I can’t afford not to.”

I have no idea what the next ten years hold. I don’t even know if I’ll still have a blog. But I do know this: I’ll never stop writing and sharing, whatever the medium, even if it’s inconsistent as hell.

I’ll always return to it.

Because I can’t afford not to.