I have 15 subscribers.
Most of them know me in the real world. So this is not a masterclass on growth. I don’t have hacks to share. I can’t show you how to make $10,531 in a month or turn Substack Posts into a car payment.
But I can offer an observation from an Unpaid Observer.
For years, I argued with strangers about politics.
I had about 1,540 followers on X.
Hardly a political force.
More importantly, it trained my brain to react all day. I spent time crafting rebuttals to people I don’t know and will never know.
I knew it wasn’t productive.
It was just a habit. A bad one.
In 2026, I repurposed that account. I stopped arguing. Not because I “won.” Not because the world improved. I just grew weary of pouring creative energy into people I’ll never meet.
I launched this Substack because long-form doesn’t really work on X unless the algorithm blesses you. I also wanted space to think. Writing has always helped me do that.
Something unexpected happened. When I stopped arguing, I began to hear my own writing voice. It had been drowned out by shouting.
For years, I had told myself I didn’t have one.
I was wrong.
Then the ideas showed up.
Lying in bed at night, I’d get scenes. Characters. Fragments of dialogue. A man stepping off a train into a morning he wasn’t meant to live. A lake with a history. A house that ages backward. A long-simmering novel that had gone quiet years ago began speaking again.
I realized I had been salting my own fields.
If you dump political outrage into your head every day, something grows.
But it isn’t creativity.
It’s agitation. And agitation crowds out everything else.
When I stopped pouring salt on the soil, shoots broke through.
I don’t know where my writing goes. Maybe nowhere. Fifteen subscribers is a small number.
But I do know this: An hour spent writing is better than an hour spent arguing.
One grows something. The other poisons the ground.
Today, I’m choosing growth.
We’ll see where it goes.
Now I’m off to write about an editor who forgets how to read.
If you’re curious:
The man stepping off the train → [A Life Unlived]
A house aging backwards → [Greenglen]
Great articles. Very interesting and well written.