I sit across my sewing machine and stare into space. Beside me are two baskets filled with heaps of fabric, and to my left, two other machines. The floor is littered with scraps, and the top of my table is scattered with pieces of an unfinished pair of trousers. I sigh and lay my head on the sewing table, exhausted. It’s only 12 pm in the afternoon. The day is still young, but it feels like I’ve been sewing for hours. I have a deadline, but not with an impatient customer, but with myself, with content that I need to put out in two days, and I’m not even halfway through. Part of me doubts I’ll meet up, another part wonders why I’m even trying.

“Oma, you’ve been doing this for years. What’s the point?” I say to myself.

I try to remind myself why I’m here. Not for the views, but because I love it. But that reassurance usually works until I start to wonder how long love can keep carrying the weight, and how long it can sustain the thing that feels like the absolute love of my life. The thing that keeps me sane. That question follows me far beyond my sewing table. It shows up every time I open my phone, every time I post and wait, every time I measure my effort against numbers that barely move.

Slow growth sucks. But people often try to spin it and argue that it’s necessary and beneficial in the long run; I don’t dispute that fact. But slow growth, in the thick of it, feels like absolute shit. The constant hard work and no results put you in a corner where you’ll keep questioning if it’s all worth it. It’s a unique feeling, constantly doing something; ideating, filming, editing, posting, and nothing externally changes. No spike. No breakthrough. No moment that confirms you’re on the right path.

Just silence.

That’s when the journey starts to feel unbearable. When effort and reward stop speaking the same language. You begin to ask yourself: Am I actually doing enough? Or am I just telling myself I am? Imposter syndrome slowly creeps in. Then self-doubt follows, and before you know it, you’re asking the most destabilizing question of all: What the fuck am I actually doing? Slow growth doesn’t just frustrate you, it messes with your mind. The constant waiting. The endless comparison. The mental math of when will this finally pay off? Slow growth starts to do something dangerous: it makes you question the value of your effort.

It doesn’t help that the internet is unforgivingly fast. Creators are constantly fighting for attention in an oversaturated feed. Trends come and go in days. Audiences move on quickly. Algorithms reward speed, not depth. So your craft, the thing you pour time, care, and intention into, gets flattened into a single metric. One video. One number. Good or bad. And suddenly, days of learning and trying are reduced to how well a post performs in 24 hours. But slow growth doesn’t end there. It lingers.

It shows up as frustration, the kind that settles into your bones. The kind that makes every day feel like a repetition with no guarantee of reward. You try, and you try again, doing your best every single day, hoping that one day something will change. You don’t know when that day will come. You don’t even know if it will. But you hope anyway. And somehow, that hope keeps you moving. The only real saving grace is love. Love for the craft. Love for the thing you keep choosing, even when it gives you nothing back. Love for the way it makes you feel whole, capable, grounded.

Slow growth is horrible in a quiet way. But it teaches you things you can’t learn any other way. It teaches patience. It teaches endurance. It teaches you that when everything external falls away, love is the only thing strong enough to keep you going. So every day, you wake up, and you return to the sewing machine. You cut fabric. You sew. You check your phone. The numbers are still static. But in your heart, you know this is what you want. Even if there was no internet. Even if there were no likes. Even if no one was watching. You would still sit with your scissors and turn scraps into something real. You would still create.

Because that ability to make something out of nothing is what makes you you. It’s where your confidence comes from. It’s where your sense of self lives. And you can’t imagine stopping. Not because the numbers are low. Not because growth is slow. But because this is the work your heart keeps choosing.

And for now, that has to be enough.