When I was 16, I started my first blog. It was 2009; I was by no means ahead of any sort of trend. Having latched firmly onto the label of “aspiring writer,” I watched authors I admired keeping up their own blog sites and figured hey. I can do that. Or I can try.

I wonder if I would have gone ahead and created my website right then and there if I’d known what becoming a content creator at such an inexperienced stage of life would do to me.

To say I am and have always been an over-doer would be putting it politely. I still am, and likely always will be, an aggressive multi-creative. Once the blog started, I couldn’t stop — not just with blogging but with creating in general. I, like so many of my generation, started a YouTube channel. I taught myself to play the guitar. I wrote novels. And on. And on.

And that was before I found my way into online spaces. My first journalism internship involved writing for an online magazine where, for the first time, I witnessed other storytellers just as skilled and driven and capable as me doing the same work … but better, it seemed. And faster. And more.

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And thus began my full descent into The Game, of which the rules are these:

1. Make as much content as you can as quickly as you can, but don’t burn out!
2. Do it often. Daily is ideal. Until when? Who knows!
3. Don’t compare yourself to others, but also compare yourself to everyone always!
4. Take breaks, but make sure you’ve worked ahead so there aren’t gaps in your publishing schedule!
5. Everything you make has the potential to be better than the last thing you made if you work hard enough!
6. The more you produce, the greater your chances of Getting Noticed™ and Making a Difference™.
7. But actually, none of these rules matter because hard work is meaningless and some people just get lucky and no matter how good you are at this, you may never be what’s considered the best at the moment.

We know all these things. Yet somehow, we keep Rising and Grinding Because Someone Somewhere Told Us It Would Pay Off Someday.

I’ve been creating content professionally for a decade. I don’t use that signpost as a means of asserting my authority here (do any of us even have that?). Only to show you that even after all that time, I see some of my followers on Twitter publishing 20+ articles and podcasts and videos and songs and newsletters per week and I still get jealous that I can’t do that.

Because despite everything I do produce in a normal week, the second someone else does more, I’m inclined to feel less-than. Not because they don’t have a right to promote their accomplishments (they do!!) but because the rules of The Game imply that since someone else can do it, I should be able to do it too.

I don’t speak for all content creators here or anywhere for that matter. But the more I feel pressured to produce, the more excuses I give myself to do just that. And what happens when you publish thing after thing after thing and realize the grind never stops?

Maybe you burn out in the traditional sense. But you might also experience the crushing epiphany that to win The Game, you can never stop creating content, and in considering stopping, you may have already lost.

In my quest to leave my mark on the world through my content, at times it feels I’ve forgotten why I started doing it in the first place. What really drove me to launch that blog I kept up for 11 years? What keeps me coming back to making things I love even when they don’t always love me back?

The more I move through time, the more my priorities shift, the more expansive my identity both in work and in life becomes. I am no longer just a blogger, I’ve never been just a podcaster or photographer. I’m also a friend. A dog mom. A supporter. This year alone I’ve written essays, read books, played music, fought demons, fallen in love. I am always moving forward, the world will never ask me to stop doing that.

But in moving forward, there will always be moments we ask ourselves the one question we’re most afraid to answer.

Is The Game still worth it?

I am so proud of the work I’ve done and will continue to do. I like writing things and taking glamour shots of my bookshelves and doing the podcasting thing; I don’t want to stop.

But we need to keep talking about the fact that the longer we keep playing this dangerous game the harder it’s going to be to quit.

I don’t mean “quit” as in stop making content entirely.

I mean quit playing the game.

Stop trying to consistently one-up yourself. Stop trying to be better than everyone else. Stop using volume as a measure of whether or not you’re succeeding.

More content isn’t always more impactful.

The longer you stay in The Game, the more you’re assured that better! faster! more consistent! will grant you the faceless prize you’ve always craved.

And here’s the same thing you’ve been told a hundred times, though chances are you didn’t take it as literally as you probably should have.

This game cannot be won. Not with these rules.

It can only be lost. Through burnout, through dissatisfaction, through deciding that giving all your time and effort and self to your content may grant you savings and clout and self-esteem, but it will not tell you you’re doing a good job. It will not make you feel validated. It will not tell you that it loves you, that you are a whole important person as you are whether you write a thousand more blog posts or zero.

We start playing The Game believing there is a finish line.

There isn’t.

Even with small goals and adequately celebrated milestones, we are all in danger of continuing on this endless path toward an end we will never reach.

That is, unless we redefine the game. Make our own rules.

Not by changing our work, but by asking ourselves what we want to gain from it. What we want it to mean in the context of our life’s greater purpose.

Do you write because you are not you without it?

Do you perform because you thrive in organized chaos?

Do you create because the world makes sense only when you’re giving something back to it?

Do you make things because it allows you to fulfill your need to produce something outside yourself, so that you can turn away from your screen at the end of the day and live a real life with real people you love and cherish without feeling guilty?

I leave you with the unfortunate declaration that I do not have all the answers. Not due to a lack of experience or nagging ambition to solve the problem but because the solution caters to the individual, not to the masses.

As with a diet or an exercise routine, what works for me may not work for you. I may continue to work 16-hour days because the work fills and energizes me, but you might benefit from, like, not doing that ever.

I cannot tell you what’s best for you. Only you can figure that out, and it starts with admitting something has to change. Maybe it’s your attitude. The people you spend your downtime with. Your goals. Your personal mission statement.

Maybe you just need a month-long break to write music and cry about the pandemic trauma you may never fully recover from and call your college roommate to tell her you love her and take your dog on a 10-mile hike and finally get a good sunset timelapse. I don’t know you. I don’t know your life.

But I do know we all deserve to be happy. We’re all people just trying our best to feel like our lives mean something.

Perhaps your meaning isn’t just in your work or your loved ones or your art but also in how much you’ve grown and learned in the years since you were young, in the lessons you can now teach by example, in realizing that loving who you are isn’t conceited or unflattering or cringe — it’s the thing we all strive for even on days we’re at our worst.

If your work and your commitment and your art reflect the love you have for yourself and the life you’ve chosen, then how much you achieve, how hard you nurture, how much you create don’t matter.

This is, perhaps, how we win. By accepting who we are so wholly that everything we release into the world moving forward inspires others to do the same.