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.
The problem I’m struggling with most right now, is that the hate doesn’t just exist in some abstract way. It always seems to arrive at the worst possible moments. When you’re already in a trough, or are already doubting whether what you’re building matters, that’s when some anon shows up to confirm your worst fears. It’s not that they’re right about anything. It’s that they’re weaponizing your existing vulnerability. You’re already questioning yourself, and then someone external validates that doubt, and suddenly it feels like evidence instead of noise—it becomes a vicious cycle that can take you down if you let it. And the timing makes it exponentially worse than it would be if you were feeling solid about your work. So again, I have to keep reminding myself that this is exactly what happened to every person I just named. The rejection didn’t arrive when they were confident. It arrived when they were uncertain, when one more “no” felt like confirmation that maybe everyone else was right.
Saying “just tune out of the noise” is always easier said than done, because when you’re building something, you’re constantly looking for signals about whether you’re on the right track. Is this working? Does this matter? Am I wasting my time? Hostility can masquerade as one of those signals. It feels like feedback because it’s a response to your work, and when you’re uncertain, any response can feel meaningful. But hostility from anonymous accounts isn’t signal. It’s just noise from people who want to see you quit. The hard part is learning to distinguish between “this isn’t working” (which is real signal that requires adjustment) and “people are being hostile” (which is irrelevant noise that requires ignoring). One tells you something about your work. The other tells you something about the people consuming it.
Building a mind that can't be fucked with
This is the ultimate defense against being fucked with: knowing yourself so clearly that external noise can’t drown out your own signal. Having values you’ve examined and chosen, not values you inherited or absorbed. Building from first principles instead of borrowing someone else’s blueprint.
This is part of the game, unfortunately. Building in public means exposure, and exposure means absorbing a certain amount of ambient hostility from people who aren’t building anything. This is a cost, not a bug. The question isn’t whether you’ll encounter it, because you will. The question is whether you can metabolize it without letting it kill your momentum.
Van Gogh could have taken the lack of sales as signal that his work was worthless. Rowling could have taken 12 rejections as proof that Harry Potter wasn’t good enough. But they didn’t, because they were building from first principles, not from external validation. They understood that the difficulty—the rejection, the mockery, the lack of immediate recognition—was confirmation they were attempting something that required attempting.
Easy things don’t get rejected 12 times. Easy things don’t get mocked by the entire art establishment. Easy things get absorbed into the existing landscape without friction. Difficult things create friction. That’s how you know they matter.
Building from first principles means your beliefs about how to build can evolve radically while your values about why you’re building stay constant. I wrote about this distinction recently—how the cringe you feel looking back at old work isn’t proof you were wrong to do it, but proof you’ve actually moved. The embarrassment is the receipt for growth. But the part that sucks is: other people will try to use that cringe against you in real time. They’ll mock your early attempts, call your work derivative or confused, weaponize your visible learning process as proof you don’t know what you’re doing. Embrace it as proof that you’re creating friction, and keep going.
The key lies in knowing yourself so clearly that external noise can’t drown out