You shouldn't need to sell yourself to find joy, contentment, fulfillment; those who try are doomed to be miserable.
But, selling yourself is still important; even if your sense of self-worth and etc isn't tied into recognition, it is still something humans crave, and it has societal value. If you are doing anything of value to others, the only way it can achieve that value is by letting those who would value it know it exists. That's called "selling". Without it, what you've done has no value outside of yourself.
That's not to say (to your point) that something done just for yourself is without some sort of objective value, but it certainly has no value to society (by definition), and we are social creatures; we all have a desire to have at least some of our work be valued by others.
I felt a similar reaction to the tone of the article. Twice the author said 'You may as well not have bothered' if no one recognized the value of your output. And your response also frames it as 'What you've done has no value outside of yourself'.
I think what the post you're replying to is getting at is that by framing things this way we overvalue things which others approve of, and undervalue things we enjoy doing for the sake of doing.
You shouldn't need to sell yourself to find joy, contentment, fulfillment; those who try are doomed to be miserable.
But, selling yourself is still important; even if your sense of self-worth and etc isn't tied into recognition, it is still something humans crave, and it has societal value. If you are doing anything of value to others, the only way it can achieve that value is by letting those who would value it know it exists. That's called "selling". Without it, what you've done has no value outside of yourself.
That's not to say (to your point) that something done just for yourself is without some sort of objective value, but it certainly has no value to society (by definition), and we are social creatures; we all have a desire to have at least some of our work be valued by others.