The price of attempting difficult things
Why hostility is proof you're building something that matters
Hello, friends! Whether this lands in your inbox or you’re catching up on the site, thanks for reading. This one’s about attempting something difficult and the hostility that inevitably follows. If you’ve been building something that matters this year and wondering whether the noise means you should quit, this one’s for you. I hope it reminds you that difficulty is confirmation, not condemnation. And if it does, I hope you’ll share it with someone else who needs that reminder. x
Building things that matter is hard. If it wasn’t, everyone would do it.
The difficulty is the point, though, because it’s what creates value, what separates meaningful work from noise, and what inevitably attracts hostility from people who want to see you quit. This isn’t a bug of building in public; it’s a feature of attempting anything difficult enough to matter.
The Wright brothers were called frauds even after they flew. Van Gogh sold one painting in his lifetime and was mocked as a talentless hack. Sara Blakely was laughed out of rooms pitching Spanx. Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper for “lacking imagination” and told Mickey Mouse had no future. Oprah was deemed “unfit for television news” and “too emotional.” JK Rowling was rejected by 12 publishers before Harry Potter saw print. Jeff Bezos watched analysts call Amazon “Amazon.bomb” and predict it would never be profitable.
These people weren’t mocked for attempting easy things. They were mocked because they were going against consensus, challenging existing structures, creating something where there was currently nothing. The Wright brothers weren’t just building a plane, they were attempting something everyone “knew” was impossible. Van Gogh wasn’t just painting, he was developing a visual language that contradicted everything the art establishment valued. Rowling wasn’t just writing a children’s book, she was creating an entire world that 12 publishers couldn’t see the value in. The hostility wasn’t random. It was the predictable response to attempting something genuinely difficult.
The only reason we know these names today is because they kept building despite the hostility. Not around it, not after it stopped, but directly through it. They faced rejection, mockery, and sustained campaigns telling them to quit, and they built anyway. What’s changed isn’t the dynamic. Building in public has always attracted hostility, but now there’s an insidious and immediate delivery mechanism. It used to be critics in newspapers or rejection letters that arrived weeks later. Now it’s in your notifications or DMs within seconds. You don’t read about the hostility in a biography after you’re dead… you absorb it in real time while you’re actively trying to do the hard thing.
Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of my own noise. Death threats, shitty DMs, anons telling me my work is worthless, people mocking the way I spell my name (yes, that’s a real thing I get probably 20 times a day). And because I’m in a vulnerable place right now, the noise has been getting to me more than usual. But here’s what I have to keep reminding myself: this isn’t happening because I’m doing something wrong. It’s happening because I’m attempting something difficult. I’m building a sustainable business from writing. I’m saying things that challenge people’s comfortable narratives about work, about what matters, about how to live. I’m betting on myself and creating in public instead of hiding behind some corporate brand. And that’s hard. The hostility isn’t proof I should stop. It’s proof I’m doing something difficult enough to matter.
