when did you stop believing in what you make?
You have created all your life.
It started with drawings—crayons on concrete roads, every colored pencil on paper. You came up with creative games, spent hours imagining new worlds and intricate stories. You wrote little poems, even if they were really just rhymes stacked together; you showed them proudly to your parents.
Then, as you grew up, another idea took shape.
Productivity.
Society pressed the same question on you, no matter what you did:
How can you monetize it?
Drawing became potential YouTube tutorials and passive income. Writing became a possible career. Imagining became a waste of time.
You postponed the days of creating freely, joyfully, into a future version of you who would have the time. The finances. The ability.
But as the years went on, you realized something. That version of you that created? She couldn’t be put off any longer.
She kept creeping back into your life in the simplest ways: a pottery class, a hand‑painted birthday card, a dusty sudoku book found in a forgotten drawer.
You felt her presence in the flutter of your stomach. In the relief of creating for the joy of it.
You know where you feel most alive.
But when it comes to making it your profession, you hesitate.
Could I really be good enough?
Could my art really be worth something?
That question—Could this be worth paying for?—is the one I’ve been circling for years, doing my best to avoid it.
So I’ll approach this the only way I know how: by discussing it with you.
What am I worth?
I don’t believe my writing is worth paying for. I never have.
It’s not because I think it’s bad.
It’s because asking people to pay means I can no longer hide behind the comfort of: it’s just something I do for fun. When money comes into the picture, it’s easier to slip back into old thinking patterns.
It’s not good enough.
It’s not deserving enough.
It’s not substantial enough.
Do you recognize the feeling?
That’s probably why it took me 15 years, including countless detours and a lot of worry, to start writing consistently.
I waited for the day someone would tell me my work was good enough—when rewards I didn’t dare compete for, and yeses I didn’t ask for, would tell me so.
It never happened.
Instead, one day, I let myself be bad at writing. (I wrote more about that here.)
The change didn’t come from finally feeling ready. It came from action. From writing anyway—despite the fear, the worry, the shaking hands.
It came from showing up on the page. From stopping the application process for IT jobs. From hitting publish that first time on Substack (a platform I understood embarrassingly little, given my computer science degree) after debating it for a month.
I still remember hovering over the button, pulse racing, this voice in my head asking, Who do you think you are?
I did it anyway.
And I’m so glad my desire overcame my fear enough to allow me to.
The scary thing
Today, I realized I have to do the scary thing again—act despite my fear screaming at me to give up. And this time, I’m doing it with you watching.
Because I can’t think a change into existence, I can only act.
So here’s the part I’ve been afraid to say out loud:
I’m turning on paid subscriptions, and it scares the hell out of me.
It’s not that I’m afraid of launching a paid membership.
I’m afraid of believing that my art could be worth paying for.
Without that old story that “I’m not worthy of being paid for my art,” I feel naked—exposed for the world to see, for myself to judge.
Suddenly, I’m not just adding something to the world for free. I’m asking to be paid.
And what does that say about me? Who does that make me?
If my best friend asked me that same question, I’d tell her:
It makes you an artist. It makes you human.
And she’d tell me the same thing.
The thing is, I would never question anyone’s right to be paid. I cheer you on every time I see it on this platform. If you feel that it’s the right thing for you, then of course it is.
So I’m trying to offer myself the same gentleness I’d offer her, and you.
I keep convincing myself to quit
For months, I’ve been asking myself the same question:
How do I make Notes on Living something worth paying for?
Maybe you’ve asked your own version of that question, about your art, your words, your little corner of the internet:
What makes this worth supporting? Why would anyone choose me?
In that case, same.
Because I don’t teach something tangible, I don’t offer growth strategies. I don’t have a framework that promises to change your life.
So… what exactly am I asking people to support?
The answer didn’t come. Because I wasn’t addressing the deeper issue underneath.
Instead, I made deals with myself. I’d figure it out when I reached five hundred subscribers. I thought it would take a long time to get there—and, if we’re being totally honest, I thought I might quit before then.
It came impossibly fast. Two months in, I still wasn’t ready, so I moved the deadline: a thousand, then we’ll talk.
I reached that goal over a month ago. And I still avoided the question.
Because here’s something you might not know about me:
I thoroughly dislike thinking about strategy. I dislike thinking about writing as business. I dislike planning anything, for that matter.
I now see how I’ve used that as an excuse to keep this question at arm’s length.
It scares me, because I’ve been noticing a pattern.
When I’m afraid of something, a dream or an idea, and my inner critic screams at me that I’m not good enough, I don’t really run away from the fear.
Instead, I find a way to convince myself that it’s not what I want anymore.
There’s now this distance between what I really want and my ability to see it.
Eventually, I convince myself that it isn’t good for me after all. I say goodbye to something that was once a dream, telling myself it’s what I really want.
I don’t want to do that anymore. Not this time.
So this isn’t an “I’m excited to announce my paid tier!” post.
It’s me, sitting on the couch with you, finally saying out loud what I’ve been afraid of naming for months.
Trusting before the proof
On my journey here, I started noticing these types of comments:
This came at the right time.
This brought me back to myself.
This makes me feel seen.
Not only did they warm my heart, but they made me realize something. You weren’t talking about my writing; you were talking about something we were making together.
Because when you read, when you add to the conversation, when you tell me a sentence made you cry in your kitchen, it doesn’t feel like my doing.
It feels like something created between us.
So I started to wonder if I’ve been asking you—and myself—the wrong question.
Instead of What do I offer?, my experience on Substack keeps asking another one:
What are we creating together?
Every essay I’ve written has been inspired by something between us: a comment, a conversation, another post I’ve read on here.
It’s a collaboration, just like life always is.
So I wanted to extend that further.
I want to create a space where we stay with the feeling longer, after the last word has been read. Because it’s one thing to understand something; it’s another to feel it and live it.
That’s what I want to create here. If it sounds a bit messy, that’s because it is. It’s life, reflected. And that’s what Notes on Living has always been about.
Beginning in August, I’d love to spend each month exploring one feeling together.
Wonder. Self‑trust. Coming home to yourself. Managing fear.
More, and everything in between.
Two essays a month will stay completely free. These will still be the heart of Notes on Living.
Then, in the quieter paid space, we’ll stay with those ideas a little longer—to feel them. To live them in real time with the tools I’ve learned throughout the years.
every month you’ll receive:
✮⋆˙ one deeply personal letter
✮⋆˙ one gentle practice for carrying the month’s ideas into your own life
It’s a room beyond, for those of you who want to go a little deeper—and for me to practice what I’ve been writing about all along:
trusting myself before I have proof.
How many of us join doesn’t really matter.
What matters is that I dare to put it out there. That I dare to have this conversation. That I dare to allow the option—not to “make money,” but to show myself that I’m worthy of it.
So I hope some of you choose to come with me. I hope you allow the paid-tier option for your own publication, if that’s what you want.
And if you don’t come along, the free letters will still be here, sealed in heart‑stamped envelopes waiting to be opened on the couch by you.
This place started as a collection of things I wanted to tell my little sister, who lives on the other side of the world.
Somehow, it’s grown into something beyond my imagination.
It’s become a way for us to come together, to feel less alone in the days of overthinking, overfeeling, overanalyzing. A couch we share at the end of the day, where we’re reminded that we’re not doing any of this alone.
I hope these letters help you reconnect with the part of you that used to draw on concrete, invent games and entire new worlds. The little you that created before anyone doubted the worth of it.
Because that’s what you help me do whenever you read, write, and leave a thoughtful comment to continue the conversation.
Whether you’re reading the free letters from your couch or joining me in the room beyond it, I hope this will always feel like a safe space you can come back to.
A place to feel a little less alone.
A place to gently practice presence.
A place to remember that you are enough.
There will always be a place on the couch for you.
take care,
♡ sofia
ps: If you feel like it, tell me about something you loved creating or playing as a child—I’d love to hear about what shaped you.
open this envelope when fear gets in your way. <3
I am part of a lot of writing groups online, and in so many of them, I see people defending what is essentially their fear of saying, “I want this as more than a hobby.” It’s been really disheartening to come across that so often. I love that Substack has consistently been a writing community that wants to own their truth — this isn’t just a hobby and we want the opportunity to be paid for our work. Our art. Our love.
I love that this started as writing for your younger sister. So often, when we imagine speaking to a younger sibling, or our own daughters, we find this wisdom and self-love that we rarely offer ourselves. Hooray for creating, and hooray for it being something worth your time, worth others' money, and worth living for. <3