Why Are We So Obsessed With External Validation?

and by we, I mean me

The Second Act is a weekly newsletter packed with obsessively-curated recommendations and ideas—let’s get to it!

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📚 The Rabbit Club by Christopher J. Yates — A dark academia thriller steeped in nostalgia and mystery. It follows an American student at Oxford who joins a secret society and uncovers buried class conflicts and dangerous loyalties. Think puzzles and power dynamics wrapped in literary intrigue, perfect for anyone craving a sharp, immersive summer read.

📺 Hijack (Apple TV+) — Idris Elba stars in this present‑tense thriller set entirely aboard a hijacked plane. Each six‑episode installment hooks you deeper into the tension, making even your living room feel like a cockpit. A masterclass in pacing and a reset of everything you thought you knew about “suspense.” And Season 2 is coming soon!

🎬 Drop (Streaming on Peacock) — A date-night thriller where a single mom begins receiving cryptic threats that turn a hopeful evening into a claustrophobic puzzle. Sharp, contemporary, and perfect if you want a gripping but contained story about personal stakes and quiet resilience.

I’m not great with rejection.

I mean, I should be by now. Life’s handed me plenty of it, professionally, romantically, even in the slow, sneaky ways society makes you feel like you’re too much and not enough all at once. And still, it stings every time. No matter how many deep breaths or therapy sessions or pep talks I give myself.

Lately, rejection has been making itself very comfortable in my orbit. I’m focused on growing The Second Act (hi, hello, welcome), and I’ve started dipping a toe into the early stages of querying literary agents, which feels like mailing little pieces of my heart out into the void and hoping one lands gently.

Each effort, creative, personal, professional, requires a kind of quiet courage. A willingness to say, this matters to me, even if it doesn’t always land the way I hoped.

Building a creative life from scratch, especially one that lives online, has its own special flavor of soul-crushing. You spend hours shaping something thoughtful, honest, and personal... only to compress it into a tagline or a pitch or a short bio that’s supposed to say, Hey! I’m worth your time! without sounding desperate or delusional. You want to show that you’re serious, but not self-important. That your work matters, but also that you’re chill about it. It’s a weird little dance. And honestly? It’s exhausting.

Building a Substack isn’t all that different. Every post is a little offering, thoughtfully made, a mix of heart and humor, and you send it out hoping it lands somewhere soft. I track the open rates and the comments and the number of times someone clicks on a link I mentioned in passing. It’s part connection, part quiet plea: Did this mean anything to you? Because it meant something to me.

I’m not in the dating world anymore, but lately I’ve been thinking about a moment from that season of life. There was someone I’d reconnected with, a familiar almost-but-not-quite. The kind where you exchange playlists and morning routines and let yourself imagine a maybe. Nothing dramatic. Just… hope.

And then: silence. No confrontation. No closure. Just distance.

And in that space, my brain did what brains do, it filled in the gaps with worst-case scenarios.

And god, it’s hard not to spiral.

Maybe he found my Instagram and decided I was too much. Or not enough.
Maybe he zoomed in on a photo and realized, despite everything being full-body and unfiltered, that I was bigger than he imagined. That my body, my face, my me-ness didn’t match the fantasy he’d built from a few swipes.
That I was, somehow, a letdown.

I don’t live in that headspace anymore, not in the same way, but I still carry what it taught me. The ache of feeling unchosen. The way external validation can twist itself into a mirror, making you doubt what you already know to be true.

And yes, there are still moments where I catch myself looking outward, waiting for someone to tell me I’m doing okay. That I’m good. That I’m enough.

But here’s the thing, I’m learning to recognize those thoughts without letting them take the lead. I’m learning to pause before spiraling. To choose myself, even when the room is quiet.

I can’t control how people respond to my work, or how friendships shift, or whether the right agent reads the right chapter at the right time. But I can keep showing up. I can keep writing. I can keep trusting the truth I already know, that I’m building something real, something honest, something mine.

And that’s more than enough.

The Second Act is an entirely reader-supported publication. Click here to subscribe or gift a friend a subscription here (if a friend sent you this —tell them thanks!). Anything you want covered? Questions? Reply with a comment below! You can also find me on Instagram. Please come say hi!