What if you build it and no one comes?

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To be honest, I often doubt whether my efforts to become a successful writer will actually lead to success. Every year, millions of people publish books—on Amazon alone. Millions more have a manuscript hidden in a drawer, waiting to see the light of day. It seems almost everyone believes they can write a book.

On social media, everyone wants to be famous. There are more than 100 million YouTube channels as I write these lines. Kids today dream first and foremost of being influencers and vloggers, flooding the market at an insane pace.

As if that weren’t enough, AI looms on the horizon—a fierce competitor for humans in nearly every creative field.

So what if I write 5,000 blog posts, publish 100 books, and send 100,000 tweets, yet never find an audience?

It’s possible. Maybe even likely.

The internet will change again in the future, and the next shift might render everything I do today irrelevant.

But that only matters if I measure success in terms of external rewards. Of course, I’d love to make a living as a writer, to have a million readers on my blog, and a loyal following on social media. But above all, I want to tell the stories in my head. I believe they’re unique—dare I say, even good. Having others read (and buy) them would be fantastic, but the deeper reward lies in simply getting them out of my head and onto the page. That alone makes the work worth doing.

Ten years from now, I hope I’ll be able to say I’m a successful author. But I can’t count on it. Yet I can count on being able to say my stories and ideas are out there, waiting for anyone who wants to discover them.

So I’ll keep building—no matter how many people come…

Starting is Always the Hardest Part

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The more new things I try, the more I realize that everything works the same way. Whatever you do, it’s not the doing that’s difficult—it’s the starting.

When you want to write a book, reaching 60,000 words feels like an impossible mountain to climb. But all it really takes is sitting down and writing the first sentence. Then, somehow, the next ones follow. Before you know it, you’ve finished your first page. If you keep at it every day, writing a full novel in a month or two no longer seems like a huge challenge. It becomes the natural result of habit.

The same thing happens when you look in the mirror and notice your belly is a bit bigger than it was in your twenties. “Oh, boy, I’m getting fat. I need to start hitting the gym.”

That moment—the choice to get off the couch and move—is what separates people who never lose the weight from those who get in shape. You don’t need to spend three hours a day in the gym. All it takes is committing to five minutes of exercise daily. Once you start, those five minutes often turn into a full 30-minute workout. Again, the habit then creates the result of being fit and in shape.

Writing (and publishing) this blog post took me half an hour. At first, I hesitated. I have a novel to finish, a mailing list to update, a YouTube video to produce, a workout to do, clients to deal with, and my apartment to clean. But as soon as I opened my word processor and typed the first sentence, the rest appeared almost effortlessly. The inner voice telling me to procrastinate and write that post tomorrow went quiet.

With everything I ever did, I realized that doing is easy—once you’ve done the hard part: starting.

Coach Red Pill’s Videos Will Always Be There

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When I first came across Coach Red Pill, I didn’t like him. He seemed like a con man trying to cash in on a trending topic—“the Red Pill”—which was gaining popularity back in the day. But as he grew on YouTube, his videos kept popping up in my recommendations, and eventually, I gave him a second chance.

Somehow, he grew on me. With each video I watched, I found myself liking him more. Even when I disagreed with him, there was usually something valuable—or at least entertaining—to take away.

When I heard he died in Ukraine, it felt strange. I’d never met him, and he had no idea who I was. Still, it felt like losing a friend. I had spent more time watching his videos and listening to his thoughts than with actual real life friends. Until his death was officially confirmed, I kept hoping it was just another internet hoax. People will say anything to go viral these days, so maybe—just maybe—someone had reported his death without checking the facts.

But sadly, it was true. Coach Red Pill (Gonzalo Lira) is gone.

He once talked about his kids. He had them later in life and was afraid he wouldn’t be around long enough to give them the life advice he wanted to share. That was one of the reasons he started making videos: so his advice would be there for his children when they needed it.

And in that, he succeeded.

His content is still available—for example, here at the CRP Archive, where you can find 436 of his videos.

Imagine his kids knowing that, in a way, their dad is still around. Of course, they’d rather have him back for real. But having him live on as a sort of digital version is as close as you can get once someone is gone.

I’d love to do the same. When I die, I want to leave behind thousands of articles, hundreds of videos, and dozens of books. I want family, friends, and everyone else to be able to look me up whenever they want—to learn from my mistakes, my successes, and my ideas, to get inspired, to laugh, and to think.

RIP Gonzalo Lira.

Women in Space

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If you’re still not convinced we’re living in clown world, take a look at today’s feminist milestone: the first all-female space crew from Bezos’ Blue Origin.

Space — the dream of millions — has now been graced by the six finest representatives the sisterhood could gather around:

  • Pop singer Katy Perry
  • CBS host Gayle King
  • Film producer Kerianne Flynn
  • And Bezos’ girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez

They also threw in two “scientists,” presumably because Hillary Clinton and Whoopi Goldberg were unavailable. Better luck next time, Whoopie.

As expected, there was no giant leap for mankind. No small step for (wo)man. Just a handful of TV personalities snapping selfies in tight dresses. By realizing that a woman can now get into space by giving Jeff Bezos a blowjob, you cannot but admit the patriarchal oppression women are facing every day in the Western world.

The whole spectacle felt like that old Simpsons episode where Homer is launched into space for PR reasons while the real astronauts do the actual work.

via GIPHY

Feminism has finally caught up to a 30-year-old cartoon. The feminists are cheering. Meanwhile, anyone with half a brain is left wondering: What absurdity will clown world do next?