Want more skill, more impact, more freedom—not merely more witnesses.

There is a real difference between wanting a larger life and wanting a larger audience. Skill, impact, and freedom actually change what your days are like. More witnesses only changes how the days are perceived, and the appetite for them grows rather than settles, so you keep needing a bigger crowd to feel the same thing.

Go through what you currently want and mark which items would still matter if no one ever knew about them. Put your effort there. The recognition may still come, and it lands much more lightly when it is not the thing you were working for.