0 Followers, 0 Network.

I started a Substack account and told no one in my life.

I’m quite sure I’m not the only one in this situation. But saying that out loud doesn’t make it easier, it just makes it feel slightly less like a personality flaw and slightly more like a shared condition. Coming from Eastern Europe, I feel exposed to a lot of judgment. Not always from others, mostly from myself.

* taken from the wonders of the internet

There’s a particular kind of self-consciousness that gets baked into you when you grow up in a culture where showing off is considered bad taste, and where admitting you want something, really want it, is somehow seen as naive. You learn early to keep your ambitions quiet. To be cautious. To wait until you’re sure before you move. The problem is, you’re never sure.

The fear of failure and embarrassment always comes first. I’m too afraid to be exposed - not just to criticism, but to the possibility that I try and it doesn’t work, and everyone who ever doubted me gets to feel right. That’s a specific kind of dread. It’s not about the failure itself. It’s about the audience.

That’s probably why I could never be an influencer. We live in an era of fast, easy money, or at least that’s how it looks from the outside. And when you come from a background where you had to fight harder for everything your whole life, watching people seemingly coast on charm and confidence doesn’t motivate you. It makes you suspicious. It makes you think twice before putting yourself out there, because you know how much it costs when things don’t work out, and you’re not sure you can afford to lose again.

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

I always feel like I have a lot of thoughts, a lot of insights. My life hasn’t always been easy, and somewhere in all of it I’ve accumulated things worth saying. But it’s difficult to expose the ideas that live in the back of your mind, the deepest ones, the ones you haven’t stress-tested yet. The ones that might be wrong. Sometimes I’m scared someone will recognize me behind this account and judge me for it. Laugh that I have no talent. That I have no idea what I’m doing.

I’m a perfectionist, so nothing is ever truly “done” for me. Every piece of writing feels like it could be sharper, every idea like it needs one more layer. I feel like I have to work twice as hard to get half the results, and the painful part is that I know this is partly self-imposed. Some people are lucky. Some people just have it in them, an ease, a confidence, a willingness to publish something imperfect and move on. I don’t consider myself one of them. I’ve always had to earn it the slow way, which means I’m also always tempted to wait until it’s ready. And it’s never ready.

When you’re raised on the idea of lacking, money, status, the “ideal life” in your head, you become too cautious about how you act. Every decision gets filtered through a layer of risk assessment. Will this work out? What if it doesn’t? What do I have to fall back on? I think that’s exactly why I had to force myself to start this, and why I have to keep forcing myself to be consistent. Because left to my natural instincts, I’d keep preparing forever and never actually begin.

When you’re chasing fast results and they don’t show up, it’s easy to quit. Trust me — I’ve quit a lot in my life. Not out of laziness, but out of shame. I started a podcast and stopped once people close to me found out it was me. I had a TikTok account and did the same. The people closest to you find out, and they laugh first. Not always cruelly, sometimes it’s just surprise or a teasing comment, but it lands like mockery when you’re already fragile about it. I couldn’t stand that. I know you’re not supposed to care. I know the advice is to ignore it and keep going. But for some of us, it’s harder than for others. We weren’t taught to brush it off. We were taught that other people’s opinions were information, not just noise.

So I’m trying something different this time. I’m not telling anyone. No announcement, no sharing the link, no asking friends to subscribe. Just writing, and putting it out into the quiet.

This account is zero followers, zero network. No algorithm backing it, no existing audience, no one waiting for the next post. Just the act of going out there. And maybe that’s the whole point, to prove to myself that I can do something without needing permission or an audience first. To do it before I’m ready, before it’s perfect, before anyone is watching.

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

If you’re sitting on something you’ve been too afraid to start: this is your sign. Not because it’ll be easy. Not because people won’t laugh. But because the cost of not trying is quietly higher than you think, and one day you’ll want to have something to look back on, proof that you showed up, even when you were scared.

If you resonate with what I write and enjoy it, I would love for you to be the one that changes my title from 0 to 1. :)