Publishing is a way of being social. Also, Once you figure out what you’re good at, and take the advice to focus on just that, all those (corporate) things that “do not matter” become friction. And learning to manage them – to remove their influence and demands on your time – is a new skill to develop.
Like many people, I have an uneasy relationship with attention, so it wasn’t clear to me that ‘professional writer with a platform’ would actually appeal to me as a lifestyle. But what I realized was that my envy was not about the attention (which I am still weird about), but about the way the world seems to open up to people who put themselves out there, successfully. They become like magnets for interesting people living thoughtful lives. I always disliked the way working at a company can warp your world around that company; people become obsessed with things like leveling and scope and other things that really, in my mind, do not matter. Being in conversation with the world felt like an antidote."
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