The Day I Stopped Refreshing the Page

The Day I Stopped Refreshing the Page

For a long time, my mornings started the same way.

Not with breakfast. Not with stretching or deep breaths or gratitude, like people on the internet suggest. My mornings started with refreshing a page.

Notifications. Views. Likes. Comments.

I told myself I was just checking quickly. Just curiosity. Just five seconds.

It was never five seconds.

I’d post something I worked hard on—a story, a thought, something honest—and then I’d wait. Refresh. Put the phone down. Pick it up again. Refresh. Each number felt personal. Too low meant doubt. Higher meant relief. Silence meant something was wrong with me, not the algorithm.

I didn’t say this out loud, but my mood depended on it. A good response lifted my entire day. A quiet one made everything feel heavier than it should.

One morning, I caught myself refreshing the page while brushing my teeth. Toothpaste foaming, toothbrush in hand, and still my thumb swiped down the screen like it had a mind of its own. That’s when it hit me.

I wasn’t waiting for feedback anymore. I was waiting for permission. Permission to feel good. Permission to believe my work mattered.

That scared me.

Because somewhere along the way, I had handed over the keys to my self-worth. I had let strangers, algorithms, and numbers decide whether I was enough. And the worst part? I hadn’t even noticed it happening.

So I did something uncomfortable.

I posted my work and didn’t check. Not for an hour. Not for the whole day. I turned notifications off. Put my phone face down. Let the silence sit there like an unanswered question.

The first few hours were hard. My hand reached for the phone without thinking. My mind created worst-case scenarios. What if nobody cares? What if this proves I’m not good enough? The absence of feedback felt louder than any comment section.

But by evening, something strange happened.

I felt lighter.

Not because the response was good or bad—I didn’t know yet. But because my work had already done its job. It existed. It was finished. It was honest. And that was enough.

That night, I finally checked.

The response was fine. Not amazing. Not terrible. Just fine. And for the first time, that was enough.

I realized I had been tying my worth to things I couldn’t control. Timing. Visibility. People’s moods. The internet’s attention span. I had been measuring myself against variables that shifted like sand.

Creativity doesn’t grow well under constant measurement. Neither does confidence.

When every piece of work becomes a test, when every post becomes a referendum on your value, you stop creating freely. You start calculating. You start bending yourself into shapes you think will please others. And slowly, you lose the joy that made you want to share in the first place.

Now, I still care. I still check. I’m human. But I don’t refresh like my happiness lives there anymore. I don’t let silence feel like failure. I don’t let numbers dictate whether I’m proud of what I made.

Some days are loud. Some are quiet. Both are part of the process.

The day I stopped refreshing the page was the day I started trusting myself again. Trusting that my work mattered because I made it. Trusting that honesty has value even if it doesn’t trend. Trusting that my worth doesn’t shrink or expand based on a counter on a screen.

And that felt better than any number ever did.

Because numbers fade. Algorithms change. Attention shifts. But the freedom of creating without waiting for permission—that stays.

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