Effort that’s performed for an audience gets tired when the audience leaves. Effort that’s private has no reason to stop.

Work done to be seen depends on being seen. When the attention moves, the reason moves with it, and what looked like dedication turns out to have been a response to watching. Work done because you want the thing itself has no such dependency. It carries on through the weeks when nobody asks and nothing is posted.

Ask yourself honestly whether you would keep going if nobody ever knew. If the answer is no, that is worth knowing rather than judging, and it might mean you want a different thing. If the answer is yes, take the audience out of it and see how much lighter it gets.