the algorithm stole my joy (and how I got it back)

a messy confession about losing my creative joy and how I’m learning to create from the heart again.

I’ve been writing since 2015, you know.

Lauren Gregory

My first email address was ridiculous. My WordPress blog had an embarrassingly dramatic name. My grammar was questionable at best.

But I always, always meant every word.

I was the kid staring out the classroom window while the lesson carried on without me. The kid who spent more time living in stories than in the real world. I was my English teacher’s favorite student, and literature felt less like a subject and more like a place I belonged.

Looking back, I wasn’t writing because I was good at it. I was writing because I didn’t know how not to.

That’s probably still true.

The platforms have changed. The rules have changed. The internet has changed. But the feeling hasn’t. Every now and then, I still sit down with something heavy on my heart and try to turn it into words.

Not because it will perform well. Not because it will be shared.

Just because writing has always been the way I make sense of being alive.

I remember when I made my first wordpress blog, I felt so darn happy about it. I wrote short stories, long form essays, all kinds of things back in the day.

Back then, creating actually felt like making art.

There was no content strategy. No posting calendar. No pressure to package every thought into something digestible. You made something because you had something to say, and that was enough.

My love for writing probably peaked a few years ago when I was working a white-collar job at a Big Four firm. Most days felt predictable, but writing didn’t. Writing was my escape hatch. I’d come home exhausted and still find the energy to create because it gave me something work couldn’t.

And for a while, the internet felt magical.

Strangers read my words and saw parts of me that people in my real life never seemed to notice. Some of the kindest things ever said to me came from people I’d never met. I won’t pretend I didn’t get addicted to that feeling. I chased it. Every writer does, at least a little.

But somewhere along the way, the landscape changed.

The platforms that once rewarded sincerity started rewarding volume. The algorithms became less interested in depth and more interested in attention. Conflict travels faster than reflection. Drama spreads further than nuance. And artists are expected to show up every day, regardless of whether they have anything real to say.

The machine doesn’t care if your creative battery is empty. It just wants another post.

Maybe that’s why I write so much and share so little these days.

I’m trying to remember what creating felt like before it became a performance. Before every piece of art arrived with a silent question attached to it:

“Will this do well?”

Some days I think the most rebellious thing an artist can do now is create something slowly, deeply, and without worrying whether the algorithm approves.

You see, when it’s time for rain, I don’t want a drizzle. I want it to pour. Thunderstorms. Deep blue evenings. The kind of weather that commits fully to being itself.

I think that’s how I approach art, too.

When something moves me deeply, I want to disappear into the making of it.
To follow the feeling wherever it goes without stopping to ask whether it has a hook, whether it’s optimized, or whether someone’s attention span can hold it long enough.

I still write all the time, actually. More than most people know. But lately, I rarely feel the urge to post it.

Some things feel more alive when they’re created for the experience of creating them, not for the performance of sharing them. I call myself lazy at times but then I am not wired to do something when I’m not feeling it in my heart.

There is a voice in my head that keeps showing up whenever I try to force myself into someone else’s version of success.

It says, “This isn’t you.” “You never started creating to be popular.”

I hear it every time I promise myself I’ll prioritize consistency over depth. Every time I try to create on a schedule that ignores how I actually work. Every time I treat art like a production line instead of a conversation with myself.

And believe me, I’ve wrestled with this for years.

I see creators who have built incredible systems. They show up every day. They operate with remarkable discipline. I admire them.

But I’ve realized that I’m a simpler person than that.

I like keeping the things that feed my soul separate from the things that feed my bank account. Not because one is more important than the other, but because the moment I confuse the two, something inside me starts to resist.

For a long time, I thought that resistance meant I was lazy.

My therapist helped me see it differently. She said, “This isn’t laziness. It’s your creative essence fighting for freedom.”

In other words, my heart was telling me something my mind didn’t want to hear: every time I push against my natural rhythm for too long, I burn out.

Her advice was simple.

Your creative soul has its own rhythm. Listen to it. That conversation stayed with me.

And recently, after years of searching for the right words, I finally wrote down what I want my creative life to feel like:

I want to put so much care into my craft that creating becomes effortless for me, and experiencing it becomes effortless for the person on the other side.

Not rushed. Not optimized. Not forced.

Effortless.

The kind of effortless that only comes from years of devotion. The kind that hides an enormous amount of work beneath a feeling of ease.

More and more, I think that’s the thing I’m really chasing. Not reach. Not growth. Not popularity. Just that rare feeling of flow where the work arrives as naturally as rain.

The funny thing is, I’m actually a happy artist.

I love watching people create. I love seeing someone become obsessed with an idea and bring it to life. There is something beautiful about anyone who chooses to make things instead of simply consume them.

But there is a kind of content that leaves me cold. You can almost see the machinery behind it.

Every sentence engineered to hold attention. Every hook carefully optimized. Every emotion exaggerated. Every story polished until it no longer feels true.

The numbers are impressive. The soul is harder to find. And maybe that’s why I struggle.

Because there are also creators I deeply respect, people who show up consistently, treat their craft seriously, and build meaningful careers from it. Many of them are full-time creators. They have systems. They have schedules. They understand the game.

Sometimes I look at them and wonder if that’s what I’m supposed to do. And that’s where I get stuck.

Heart or consistency. Freedom or discipline.

Create when the fire arrives, or learn how to build a fire every day.

I’m still searching for that answer. Whenever I drift too far from myself, that familiar voice returns. “This isn’t you.”

For a long time, I treated that voice like an obstacle. My therapist saw it differently. She called it a guardian. Not a voice trying to sabotage me, but a voice trying to protect something precious.

A part of me that knows the difference between creating because I love the work and creating because I need the validation. A part of me that can feel when I’m chasing attention instead of meaning. And then there’s this word I’ve been carrying around lately:

Effortless.

For years, I thought wanting things to feel effortless meant I was avoiding hard work. My therapist challenged that too. She said effortless isn’t the absence of effort. It’s effort that is aligned.

It’s spending hours on something that energizes you instead of drains you. It’s working with your nature instead of against it.

That’s why her advice felt so simple and so difficult at the same time:

Create what genuinely fires you up. Not what you think you should create. Not what the algorithm wants. Not what everyone else seems to be rewarded for.

Create what genuinely lights something up inside you. Maybe that’s the answer I’ve been looking for all along. Not heart or consistency. But a consistency that comes from the heart.

tbh, the biggest thing that gets in the way of creating is fear.

The fear that nobody will care.

That I’ll spend days, sometimes weeks, making something meaningful, only for it to disappear into the endless stream of content. That it won’t reach the people it’s meant for. That the words will leave my hands and never find a home.

I know every artist wrestles with this in some form. I do too.

The second thing is simpler. I’m still camera shy. (Which is funny because I have so much to say.)

I can fill pages with thoughts. I can spend hours writing about things that matter to me. But put a camera in front of me and suddenly I become aware of every expression, every pause, every flaw in my delivery.

A few years ago, I walked away from a comfortable career to build something of my own. It was one of the most courageous decisions I’ve ever made.

And while I’m proud of that choice, there are moments when I wonder how people see me now. Do they think it was worth it? Do they think I’ve made it? Do they think I’m lost?

The thing is that none of those questions actually matter. The people who truly know me understand that this was never about taking the safest path.

It was about choosing the path that felt alive.

And I’m still choosing it. Every day.

Because somewhere beneath all those fears is a truth, my truth.

I didn’t leave one life behind to spend the rest of my days seeking permission from strangers. I left because I wanted the freedom to build something that felt like mine.

And despite all the doubts, I still believe that’s a bet worth making.

I’ve started calling it the flow state.

It’s that place where deep work feels light. Where hours disappear without you noticing. Where creativity isn’t forced or extracted through discipline alone—it simply arrives, and your only job is to follow it.

For me, it’s the antidote to the endless pressure to perform.

When I’m in that state, none of those things matter. I’m simply making something because I love making it.

Leaving behind certainty to build something of my own was one of the biggest risks I’ve ever taken. So of course my work feels vulnerable. So of course I worry about what happens to it.

These creations aren’t just content to me. They’re pieces of my life.

What you create is sacred. Guard its soul.

A friend told me & That stayed with me.

my dream was never just to create things. My dream was to connect.

I’ve made some genuinely wonderful friends through the internet. People from different countries, different cultures, different walks of life. People I would have never met otherwise.

And because of that, I believe something most people think is naive. I believe it’s possible to have friends in every corner of the world.

The kind of friendships where, if I happen to visit their city one day, I can send a message and say, “Are you free for lunch?” and it feels completely natural.

Not because we followed each other. Because we know each other. Because somewhere along the way, trust was built.

The older I get, the less interested I am in building an audience. I’m interested in building a life filled with good people.

People who know my story. People whose stories I know.
People who can count on me, and whom I can count on in return.

I’m good at business. But if someone were to describe me years from now, I hope that isn’t the first thing they say.

I hope they say: “He was someone you could rely on.”

To me, that feels like a life well built. And maybe that’s what all of this has been about from the beginning.

Last week when I was watching a grandmother play with her grandkid. the kid was carefree, the grandma was gentle. there was nothing in the world to bother them. it was so pure. I wanted to write everything I felt while watching it. that’s the reason after almost nine months of break, I came back on substack.

Here are a few things I have been trying lately :

1. brainstorm and record, without judgment. I’ve started taking my ideas for walks. Literally. I’ll be outside, and if something comes to me, I don’t interrogate it or try to shape it into something “good.” I just let it exist. No Googling, no references, no second-guessing.

   I record quick voice memos for everything that shows up. Half-formed thoughts, strange connections, fragments that don’t make sense yet.
   
   I use a pomodoro timer of 25 minutes for focused work, followed by a 5-minute break.
   
   The science behind pomodoro is simple: it breaks down work into manageable chunks, helping your brain stay focused and avoid burnout. those short breaks let your mind reset, which actually improves your concentration and creativity when you return to the task.

2. detach from the numbers. I have stopped looking at the stats of how a post is performing. I take my sweet time to write my pieces and when I am satisfied with the output, I schedule it for a whole month. this way I can be stress free about posting and can wildly think about new ideas.

3. refill the well. A senior writer I respect once told me something that went against everything I thought I should be doing: stop consuming other artists for a while.

   He called it refilling the creative well.
   

   He said, “You need a reset. Find your voice again, and stick with it.”
   

   So I’m trying that. Less input, more listening. Less noise, more space. I’m giving myself time to hear what’s already there underneath everything else—before I try to add anything new on top of it.

Long blog today. It felt really good writing on Substack after such a long time. I hope readers of this blog will have the most beutiful June of their lives. Sending warm hugs to everyone trying to build their own thing.

Last thing I wanted to share with you all is what I’m building.

I run a tech and creative studio with an amazing team. This June marks one year since we took on our first official client (still feels a little unreal to say that out loud.)

We build custom tech products: websites, web apps, and systems connected with tools like WhatsApp and email automation. Alongside that, we also handle social media management for founders and businesses. From scripting to editing, everything is done in-house.

We intentionally work with a limited number of clients so we can stay close to the work and never compromise on quality.

If you ever need something like this, feel free to reach out at work@offosid.aou.app. I’d genuinely love to hear what you’re building even if it doesn’t turn into a formal collaboration.

creating again,

Sid.
(aka offosid)

A song recommendation from end :