Alright, listen. I gotta tell you about a little revelation I had. It hit me like a stale bagel to the face.

We’re in March. March! How did that happen? I just blinked. I swear to god, I blinked and it was January. I was staring at a wall, trying to remember if I had to buy oat milk, and suddenly the light changed and now we’re hurtling towards spring. The existential dread of a rapidly shrinking calendar is real, folks. It’s the background radiation of my life.

And look, I’m not gonna pretend I’m not aware of the… ya know… the stuff. The big, heavy, terrifying stuff. There’s a war on. There’s always a war on. It’s like the planet’s version of a low-grade fever that occasionally spikes to a 105. You’re trying to live your life, trying to remember if you paid the electric bill, and in the back of your mind, you’re just… aware. Aware that the whole thing could go tits up at any moment. It’s a real motivator. Or a real paralyzer. Usually a little bit of both.

So in the midst of this ambient, low-hum terror, I did what any rational, well-adjusted person would do. I put my head down. I decided to focus. To do the work. To chip away at the granite block of my own mediocrity.

And that’s when I remembered… oh yeah. The other thing. The thing I hate. The thing that makes me feel like I’m wearing a cheap, rented tuxedo and trying to sell you a used Prius.

Marketing. Self-promotion.

I have to do the marketing. I have to do the little dance where I say, “Hey, look at this thing I made. It’s pretty good. You should check it out.” And every time I do it, a little piece of my soul withers up and dies. It’s like asking someone to validate your existence. It’s deeply, profoundly uncomfortable.

And I used to think that discomfort was a virtue. I used to wrap it up in a little blanket of authenticity. I’d say things like, “I’m not good at the hustle,” or “I just want the work to speak for itself.” And that sounded noble. It sounded like I was above the fray.

But you know what that really was? It was fear. Plain and simple. I was afraid of the attention. Afraid of being seen and judged. Afraid that if I actually held my work up and shouted, “Here it is!”, someone would look at it, then look at me, and say, “Yeah, that’s the best you got? That’s it?” And then I’d have to agree with them. I’d have to admit that the void inside me wasn’t an artist’s temperament, it was just… a void.

So I’d hide. I’d do the work, the real work, the writing, the mumbling into a microphone, and then I’d just hope people would magically find it. Like a message in a bottle that I just threw into the ocean and then got annoyed that no one on the other shore had bothered to decode my stupid, damp ramblings.

But here’s the thing that finally snapped into focus, probably while I was staring at that wall again, thinking about the war and the march of time: The fear of being seen is a luxury. It’s a privilege for people who think they have all the time in the world.

And we don’t.

There’s a war on. The planet is on fire. We’re all just hurtling through space on a rock. You don’t get to be precious about your ego. You don’t get to be afraid of the spotlight when the lights could go out at any second. If you have something to say, if you made something that feels true, you have a responsibility to put it out there. Not for the ego hit, not for the likes, but because maybe, just maybe, it connects with someone else who’s also feeling lost and terrified and is just trying to remember to buy oat milk.

The self-promotion isn’t about bragging. It’s about finishing the sentence. You did the work. The terrifying, vulnerable, soul-baring work. If you just leave it in a drawer, you’ve only done half the job. The other half is letting it out into the world to do whatever it’s gonna do. Crash and burn, or maybe, just maybe, land.

So, fine. I’ll do the marketing. I’ll make the little post. I’ll tell you about the thing. It’ll feel gross. My stomach will clench. I’ll feel like a fraud.

But I’d rather feel like a fraud for five minutes than feel the regret of a lifetime for staying quiet because I was too scared to handle a little attention.

Time’s flying. There’s a war on. Put your head down, do the work, then stand up, clear your throat, and show someone. That’s the deal. That’s the whole damn thing.

Alright. I’m done. Go by my book or whatever. Jeez.

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When I’m not babbling my truth into a WordPress page, I’m blogging about marketing for creative people. I collate it all over on digitalmarketingforcreatives.blog. I’d love to see you there. My book? Oh, I’m glad you asked. I noticed, and this is 12+ years of observation, that creative people tend to get bogged down in marketing, for a variety of reasons. My book, Digital Marketing for Creatives, is a system to get creatives marketing effectively without taking too much time from the real work: being creative.

Here, I pop in occasionally, my original plan was to have this as a central point for a wide range of my creative practices. This magic box below will allow you to subscribe and receive notifications when I post. No spam.