Not Everything Has To Be For Sale
Sebastian, I went through exactly the same thing you wrote about yesterday.
Hustle culture has melted my brain. I hardly remember the times when I was able to do something for fun, not for profit. Or, the allure of profit, I might say.
I came up with a cool idea fairly quickly, and, full of excitement, set off to work on it. After one particularly prolific bout of amateur game development, I suddenly thought: Hey, I could sell this! And, as quickly as the fun began, it ended. Working on that game was, from then on, well, work.
I can't remember when I wrote about it but this is a notion I struggle with ALL the time. I like to write, and produce podcasts, and I constantly find myself thinking "how can I make money off of this?"
I've since determined that I'm not going to make money off of what I like to do, and I'm fine with it. The most that I want right now is for people to read (or listen to) my stuff and send me a note saying "hey, I liked what you did!"1.
Let me be clear: I'd love to be able to earn money by writing, but I'm not going to look at every idea as an opportunity to do so, or try to find That One Niche that will translate into millions of view and sweet, sweet ad revenue.
Sometimes it's cool to just write, you know?