159. The Milestone Myth.

Chasing milestones until we reach them to realise that life doesn't suddenly change.

As many of you may already know, last week I passed one thousand subscribers on my newsletter, which sent me into a bit of a mental spiral. I hadn’t officially set this number as a milestone to work hard to reach as soon as possible—it was more like a lighthouse in the distance, guiding me through the darkness without knowing exactly how to get there or what exact steps to take. In other words, it was simply a distant light that seemed far away and, to some degree, unreachable. 

But life is full of surprises, and I’m now sitting under that lighthouse, just as I used to do as a teenager. I grew up by the beach, and lighthouses have always been a constant presence in my life. You could walk for miles along the shore, but you’d always reach the end of the beach, full of concrete blocks that led to a small lighthouse. 

I remember spending a lot of time sitting on those grey blocks, going over every teenage worry and fear, with nobody but the occasional fisherman nearby. The only sound was the surge and the retreat of the waves. I used to imagine the sea pulling my thoughts and feelings out of me, carrying them far away, where they could dissolve and turn into something else surrounded by fish, far from my mind. 

As I write this, in my mind I’m sitting under the lighthouse, asking the sea, once again, to transform my thoughts, but in reality, I’m sitting in my garden at home. It’s autumn now, and the leaves are beginning to fall from the trees, however the sun is shining. I felt like I should make the most of this sunny day and the bright energy to dive headfirst into my feelings for today’s essay. Everything feels heavier and darker on a grey, overcast day and it can be difficult to see the good things when life feels dense and harder to transit. The magical thing about the human mind is that your body can be sitting in the garden, soaking up the sun, while your Self is at your favorite teenage lighthouse without much effort. I’ve decided to retreat to that spot to reflect and let the sea guide me as I write. 

this is the lighthouse I spent countless hours at

Reaching the one thousand subscriber mark got me thinking. Do all humans need a goal? Do we need goals because we’re unable to live in the present moment for what it is? Are goals useful to help us stay motivated and be consistent? Do we truly need the routines we crumble without? Are we on this earth to be productive and accomplish small and big goals? But most importantly, why do we feel lost once we achieve the goal? 

We set ourselves big goals and spend every waking moment working toward them, often suffering and complaining. When we finally cross the finish line, our lives lack meaning. The routines we built to stay motivated and productive to get closer to our goal are no longer necessary, and our days are suddenly full of blank spaces filled with possibilities we don’t know how to handle. When all the noise, to-do lists, and "must-dos" disappear, we’re left with life, and we don’t know how to live it. 

We scroll for hours on TikTok and end up asking ChatGPT to create an optimized schedule to make the most of every waking moment, but I wonder if we can just be bored, do nothing productive, or engage in activities unrelated to our goals, allowing ourselves to “waste time.” We drool over YouTube videos of people living in the countryside, baking bread and spending time in the garden, while we work our eight-hour day-job from home, with the video playing in the background—half of our brain believing that the person in the video is us, the other half hustling non-stop until we “make it.” We all dream of living in the countryside, surrounded by nature, taking daily walks in the forest without our phones, living in houses with no Wi-Fi, becoming unreachable, hiding from the world and society. But how do we expect to live that life if we can’t even escape from ourselves?

what my lighthouse looks like in real life

Once I crossed the one thousand subscriber mark, Substack stopped displaying each new individual subscriber. Where I used to see the number increase with every login, it now condenses the count into a shorter format. 1012 is now 1.01k. The number doesn’t change every time I access the dashboard, and in a way, something inside of me has stopped along with it. There’s no clock ticking, no counter clicking—just a sense of silence and stillness. To represent the feeling, it’s as if I’m standing in an empty white room with nothing but myself. No sounds, no windows, no people, no objects—just me and an intense silence. My mind gives me two options: I can feel at peace and focus inward, or I can start to go crazy and look for an escape. Ever since I saw the subscriber count reach one thousand, I’ve been teetering between these two worlds, not fully leaning into either. I observe each side, but before one overtakes me, I pull back into the middle. Not letting any of the waves grab me, ducking under each one right before they reach me, feeling the current wash over me without feeling grabbed and sucked in by it’s force.

However, in real life I’m not locked in a white room, nor am I sitting under the lighthouse or steering clear of the currents. But I am in a state of retreat, hidden away within myself, dancing between my inner world and the outer world. In other words, I’m spending time in my head and in my body. I’m switching between the two, high and low, back and forth, which leaves me feeling like I’m in neither place. I’m somewhere that feels like a state of limbo, simply observing and allowing my thoughts to take me to different realities and playing them out in my mind. After all, life is only what you decide to believe and how you decide to interpret the signals you pay attention to, so I’m reminding myself to not cling onto anything too tightly, letting the water flow around and through me.

Nothing in my life has changed because I passed one thousand subscribers, and I don’t think I’m going to stop writing and publishing anytime soon, so it’s not even a finish line. But I did learn something from this milestone: I realised that, in a way, I expected my life to change the moment I saw that big number on the screen, and it didn’t. Nothing did.

two other lighthouses I enjoyed as an older teen

My life has been changing every day for the past three years. I’ve been in a constant state of evolution—my writing has improved, my thoughts have expanded, my voice has matured, and facing the blank screen has become easier. Looking back, I’m nowhere near where I was when I started. My life has changed little by little, day by day, decision by decision, and that’s what has slowly led me to seeing the number one thousand on my screen.

We’re all guilty of thinking that when we achieve “X,” life will be completely different, but the hard truth is that it won’t be. And if it is, it’s fleeting. When I saw the 1,000 mark and received the congratulatory email from Substack, I took a screenshot, sat with the feeling of excitement and disbelief for a few minutes, and thought about how surreal it felt, until it all faded away and life returned to exactly the way it was before I went from 999 to 1000. The trees were still the same, the clouds didn’t disappear, the rain didn’t stop, and nobody called to give me a prize. I wasn’t suddenly rich or a different person. I was still just me, with a lot of people reading my essays each week and a number on my computer to prove it. As magical and special as that is, my life remains the same as when I had fewer subscribers, yet we all cling to the hope that one big event will transform our lives forever.

In short, goals are useful to use as guides to help us get where we want to go, they aren’t the finish line, they’re just the arrows in the forest reminding you which path you need to take.