The Drive Was Never About the Site — It Was About Being Seen

For months, I poured myself into building a website — a space to share reflections, healing tools, and parts of myself that had never been given room to exist. It felt like a purpose project, like something I had to bring into the world. And it was. But what I’m starting to see now is that the real drive underneath it wasn’t about the site itself.

It was about being seen.

For most of my life, I’ve looked for some kind of external validation to feel safe. Because I never got it from the people I needed it from. No real emotional support. No reflection that I was good or whole or worthy as I was. So I built this website — not to prove something superficial, but to prove I existed. That my thoughts had value. That I had a voice. That I could help others not from theory, but from lived experience.

There was a period — not long ago — when this site consumed me.
I thought about it constantly.
I wrote endlessly.
I balanced it alongside poker, assuming that the poker was the “serious” work and the site was something I just did because I cared.

But now I’m starting to see that maybe the opposite was true.

Maybe the site — the vision, the structure, the deep reflection — was the work.
And maybe poker was just something I did in the background, a form of momentum while my real identity was trying to take root.

Now that the urgency around the website has softened, I’m noticing something else: the drive to play poker is falling away too. Maybe it was never really about poker at all. Maybe what I needed was a space that mirrored back the parts of me I was finally reclaiming.

And now that the mirror exists — I don’t feel like I have to run anymore.

I’m not rushing to release things.
I’m not obsessing over being useful.
I’m not trying to “launch” anything right now.
I’m just living.

If the website is ever wrong, I’ll learn from it.
If it helps no one but me, that’s still more than enough.
Because it’s already done something powerful: it helped me realise that the part of me who needed to prove his worth was never actually broken. He just needed a place to lay his tools down and rest.

The drive was never really about the site.
It was about being seen.
And now, I think I finally see myself.