1000 articles

Four years ago I was quite miserable at a job that I hated. All my plans regarding freelance failed, so I had to give up on my goal, which was to make enough money online to avoid getting a 9 to 5 job, and get a 9 to 5 job.

I got hired in 2019 after a short interview, and worked at that place for almost 2 years. I hated most of it. I had to talk to clients almost all the time, which I hated. I had to convince people to buy shitty things, which I hated. I had to put up with bosses who didn’t care about anything other than the profits, which I hated. It should come as no surprise that I was quite depressed during that time.

One thing that helped however was Stoicism. I don’t exactly remember how I learned about it, be it either randomly or through some recommendation online, but I began learning more about this “school of philosophy”, or “branch of philosophy” if that makes more sense to you, which is best known for teaching people to pay attention to and only care for things that are under our control, while ignoring or being indifferent to everything else.

At least that’s what I focused most on during those two years at that job.

I hated what I did and the people I had to work for. But through Stoicism I learned to accept those two things as uncontrollable factors. Sadly, it was impossible for me to get a better job at the time, due to the region I lived in. That was out of my control. The people I had to work for, and their behaviour, motivations, goals, all these things were also out of my control. It would’ve been impossible for me to change those people. So, I tried to focus on the only thing that I had control over — myself.

I got better at talking to people. I got better at calming myself during stressful situations. I got better at being braver when talking to my bosses, realizing that the worst thing they could do was to fire me. I got better at using the tools that I had to work with. I even became one of the first people who learned how to use some new tools meant to help us create contracts for people willing to buy some of our newest products.

In short, things got better at work, because I decided to ignore what I couldn’t control and focus on the things that I was capable of influencing.

I eventually quit that job and got another one. The same mentality helped me get better and better at it. I accepted criticism and focused on getting better. I ignored mean comments and attempts at demoralizing me. I just kept working and improving. Eventually, I became an asset there.

This way of doing things worked so well that I decided it would be a good idea to apply it to Medium and to these articles as well. I want more people to read what I write, to like my content, and even to make money out of this activity. But all that is completely out of my control. The only two things that I can influence are the amount of content that I create, and the quality of that content. That’s why I decided to come up with a new and better goal for this platform: to write and post 1000 articles.

That number is fairly realistic. I already posted the same number of articles on Hive. It took some time, but it’s definitely doable. That amount of articles will also make it easier to discover me — after all, the more I post, the higher the chances that someone will stumble upon something I write. And all it takes to get this done is a good routine and consistency. That’s it.

I can’t make you read what I write. I definitely can’t make you like it. If I try, I’ll end up being confused and miserable. But I can continue to write, as much as I can, and wait to see what happens. Success is out of my control. Hard work isn’t.