I’ve been blogging since 2011. Movers Mindset started 2015. Open + Curious in 2024 with a different shape. Podtalk started in there too. Each project has its own arc, and it’s own specific thing that draws me to keep creating. After all this time, I can now see there’s a question I never paid attention to which lies underneath all of them: What does it take to keep making something in public, for years?
The pieces below are about the practice of showing up — what permission feels like, what resistance is, how cumulative invisible work pays off, and what “uphill” writing means. A couple are distilled from Podtalk conversations with people who arrived at hard truths and put them into words. This thread is sequenced for someone who’s making something in public and wondering how to keep at it without burning out, quitting, or going sideways into something they didn’t set out to do.
Permission to continue
7 for Sunday — March 2025
Open with the inheritance. Someone who modeled the practice for me dies, and I realized the permission they gave wasn’t theirs to give. I already had it. Jack London’s club it — go after what you want with force — turns out to be the most generous instruction possible, because it gives you permission to commit even when the outcome is uncertain.
Sit down
constantine.name — November 2024
The Pressfield line that does the most work for me: “It’s not the writing that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is resistance.” Cling to that for everything you’re trying to keep making — it’s not the doing that’s hard. It’s the showing up that’s hard. Really hard.
The illogical thing
Podtalk Field Note — with Cassian Bellino
Cassian got laid off and immediately built everything nobody asked for — courses, communities, funnels. By any reasonable measure it was a mistake. But: “my emotions wouldn’t have settled had I tried the logical thing.” Sometimes what in hindsight is clearly the wrong path, is actually the only way to reach the destination, and the flailing is how some creators process toward clarity.
Bifocals
constantine.name — January 2026
My bifocal attention: solving today’s problem while simultaneously noticing the friction I can’t leave alone. I’ll stop in the middle of the task to write the script, the alias, the doc, the template — not because I’m procrastinating but because that is the real work. The payoff is cumulative and mostly invisible, which is what makes it hard to commit to.
100 issues of my “7 for Sunday” email
constantine.name — August 2024
At the 100-issue mark of 7 for Sunday — three years of weekly issues — what mattered wasn’t the number. It was that I’d kept going through stretches when simply knowing that readers existed was what got me through. The life preserver that saves you is necessarily thrown by another. External validation isn’t ideal, but sometimes it’s what keeps you in the boat.
Writing uphill
7 for Sunday — December 2024
Downhill writing is what you want to say; uphill writing is what you need to say — the thing you’re afraid of, the thing you think nobody wants to hear. The best writing is almost always uphill. The discomfort is usually the sign you’re onto something real.
When a Podcast Is Finished
Podtalk Field Note — with Alasdair Plambeck
Closing on the hardest part: knowing when to stop. Not failed, not abandoned — finished. Alasdair ended his podcast after four-and-a-half years because the work was complete. The skill isn’t just keeping going; it’s also recognizing when keeping going has quietly become a different act than what you set out to do.
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