How to suffer in public

How do you spread an optimistic message online while avoiding cliche platitudes while also sharing honest challenges without being a miserable downer?

The correct mindset to earn a fulfilling and successful life is optimism, though this is not my natural mindset, for me skepticism is default. It's constant work for me to spread positivity and optimism but people and opportunity are attracted to positivity, which results in my life getting better. It's an upward cyclical machine and the more I live it the easier it gets. Attitude is contagious

I'm not referring to bullshit platitudes aimed to make people feel better. I'm not trying to sell anyone anything, I'm not trying to look good to others, I generally encourage people to work hard, make sacrifices, and have a good attitude no matter what is happening in their life because it's worked for me and I believe it will work for others. This is what I think is true.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou will find that blood is spirit - Nietzsche

The problem I have today is, this is all easy when life is going well.

Are you excited to hear about my problems?

Life doesn't always go well though, and problems aren't as fun to share online. Most consumers of the internet are looking for highly produced show or want to live vicariously through perfect people doing incredible things. These folks came to the internet to avoid their own problems, they certainly don't want to hear about my problems.

So should I just shut the fuck up when I don't have anything positive to share? It would seem disingenuous to tell the world how great things are when they are great but not share the challenges when they inevitably occur. I am blessed that authenticity comes pretty easy to me, but authenticity means always. Curated authenticity doesn't exist.

Everyone has challenges in life, I know this and I know most people keep their challenges to themselves and suffer in silence. My goal is not to share my troubles, it's how to use my experiences and willingness to be vulnerable to make other people stronger?

I don't mean to sound virtuous, perhaps a more appropriate question is, how can I complain online without spreading negativity? How do I do all this without sounding like an entitled jackass because pretty everything lousy in my life is a first world problem. I am also sure I'm over-thinking the volume of people who notice.

"You will be far less concerned about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do" - Infinite Jest

Find problems, lest they find you

As I write this in February of 2026 I have been grinding through a host of projects over the last months that will not seem to end and I am not good at doing the same thing day after day. I want to hunt for a new project, brutally kill it, and then move on. Working on the same thing for months is soul crushing.

I have kept a good attitude so far, and I have sharing optimism to the world in the face of this pain, but it is starting to beat me down and I find myself retracting. I don't want to go online and share negativity, so I say nothing at all. I am wresting with this inconsistency.

Long form writing is therapy, the context creates clarity and getting things on paper is some mystical process that transfers the pain out of my soul and onto a screen. I feel better about the whole situation already.

It's embarrassing to write all this and use the word suffering when I'm healthy, my relationship with my wife is incredible, and all my problems are business and bureaucracy (which I hate more than almost anything) and growth.

"Solutions to problems, easy or difficult, is the stamp of modernity. While antiquity treated the tensions as permanent" - The Closing of the American Mind

The fact is, problems are a part of life. If you volunteer for problems you can convert them into opportunities, and you may try to hide in a little corner of the world and hope problems don't find you, but they will, and since you spent all your time hiding you will be underprepared for them.

Public therapy

I have been writing in my little corner of the internet for almost a decade and the person who has gained most from it has been me. Isn't that weird?

No one wants to hear us complain on the internet, but sometimes it's good for us to get it out and it's not so important who it may annoy. Especially with short form content where basically no one sees it and they forget in 10 seconds anyway. Long form is even healthier because it would be quite difficult to write 1000 honest words about how terrible life is and then not feel better from the process or more likely, find out you're wrong.

So thank you for listening to me complain