College was the time in my life when I realized I was an overachiever and I basked in it. I felt a lot of purpose in being so busy. I liked having a full calendar and a status on campus.

Every activity I did on campus revolved around events. Planning them. Executing them. Being a leader. I forged an identity through these things. Putting on events on campus was a front-and-center kind of role. I think there were parts of me that liked being seen and recognized for the work I was doing. Don’t we all?

I can’t tell you exactly where the shift happened, only that it did. I went from trying and executing things that I loved to being as involved as possible in as many things as possible. I was happy, yes, but I was burnt out. I think I was desperately trying to prove something but I’m not sure if it was for other people or for me.

The culture we live in will likely never stop praising the busy… the hurried… the ones getting after it. And I still love a bit of hustle. I look back on those late nights of starting More Love Letters, a few years after college, and I smile because I felt really alive during that time. But that’s the thing I want for you: I want you to feel alive. Like, really alive.

In my junior year of college, I did a journalism internship with the Worcester Telegram and Gazette– a major paper in my college’s city. I’d loved every opportunity I had before this one but this was something different. Something I’d only felt when I was younger, knee-deep in the art of storytelling. I felt so much purpose and I knew I wanted to follow this feeling.

Because of this internship, I was asked to be the assistant editor of the college’s newspaper because of my journalism experience. I had no idea how hard the newspaper staff worked to create the paper twice a month. Countless hours were spent in a basement office tucked away from the rest of the bustling Student Activities corridor. I’d worked hard before but I always felt seen and spurred on, thrust into the spotlight for all the good things I was doing.

Much of this work was thankless. Occasionally someone would praise an article or thank me for my column but they never saw the long hours or the late nights where the software would crash and we’d have to start from scratch all over again. They never saw us huddled in the newspaper office til 2 in the morning. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t need anyone to see it. I felt so alive and so on fire. For the first time in four years of college life, I felt the most “me” I’d ever hoped to feel in a completely unseen role.

I felt the need to constantly prove myself beginning to fall away. I wanted more of this feeling– this feeling that I was getting closer than ever to who I was made to be. I feel it most when writing.

Writing, no matter how technologically advanced we get, will always be secret work. It will be working with less praise. It will be working in the trenches. The best creative work is always done in secret.

So what about the praise? The praise we’ve become wired to seek in every aspect of our lives…

What if it’s not about who praises us? What if it’s pointless to work to create post after post, reel after reel, just to get traction from other people? Approval. Likes. Follows.

None of that holds any weight if you aren’t alive in the process… if the thing you’re creating doesn’t light you up and make you want to run laps, regardless of who sees you running the laps.

But friend, if you can do that, if you can work your tail off without the need for other people to validate you, you’ll learn to validate yourself. You’ll learn that secret work matters. You’ll learn that creation is a process and never a quick fix. It will become less about the image you put out there to others and so much more about the blood, sweat, and tears that go into a labor of love.

I hope we don’t forget that. I’m praying with everything I have that we don’t forget the way it feels to create in unseen spaces. To show up for the craft instead of the applause.

Applause is fleeting. It never holds. Find the thing that makes you feel alive. Follow that thing. Carve out space for it. It doesn’t even have to be a lot of space. Just 15 or 30 minutes a day, doing something that makes you feel so much like yourself, is the best medicine for the soul. It will keep giving back to you as you pursue it and it will likely make you thrive in other areas of your life.

Who cares if no one sees you at work? Who cares if they don’t know about the long hours? You do. You know this matters. That’s enough.

I’d love to hear from you:

In moving my blog to a newer platform, I sadly had to let go of the thousands of comments and conversations that came from readers over the last 10+ years. This grieves me deeply but I know there will new conversations, fresh words of wisdom, and opportunities to create close community once again. I’d love to hear from you in the comments section. I’ll be reading + replying on a regular basis.