I've heard Tom Webster talk about how no one deserves an audience. If you want one you're going to have to work at it. And if not, then enjoy creating your art. _<- This is a paraphrase of his exact words, but it does convey the meaning.
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I've heard him say it over and over again. In his book The Audience Is Listening, on stages, in webinars, on podcasts and it sounded nice enough. But it wasn't until I heard it this past week that it hit me in a whole new way.
Backstory:
When I speak on stages, in workshops, on webinars, in person, I talk about how we need to give ourselves permission to experiment. I recommend building in public as a form of open experimentation. It takes the pressure off our need for perfection and removes analysis paralysis. Why? Because it's an experiment and no one knows what will happen. If we knew what was going to happen it would be a "for sure" thing we were doing. But because we are trying something new (like podcasting) and aren't quite sure how it will go, it's an experiment. So, go wild and see what happens.
I have personal experience with this model. In 2005 I wanted to try this new thing called podcasting. In 2007 I wanted to host user generated conferences (PodCamp San Antonio, Barcamp, etc.), Also, in 2007 I wanted to see if a 30 day podcasting challenge (National Podcast Post Month) would work, Every single one of these things that I had no idea how to do were open experiments. They all turned out to work and 21 years later as someone who works as a podcast producer, that one experiment in 2005 turned out to be a career.
Not everything works. There was also the experiment where I thought I would host live Twitter Spaces while participating in a live chat on Twitter. That didn't work at all. The folks who joined me on Twitter Spaces had no interest in the tweet chat topic. It was challenging to participate in the interactive Q&A of a chat while also speaking with people about all manner of topic that was not related to the chat. And that's just one example of something that totally did not work.
So what does that have to do with Tom?
As I mentioned, I was listening to him on a webinar this past week and this time when he said that no one deserves an audience and that if you don't want to work to attract one then enjoy making your art, it hit me differently.
All of my experiments did not deserve an audience, but I had enjoyed making my art. The win for me was in the doing and in the seeing an idea come to life. Some of them were successful and others less so, BUT I still enjoyed the process. I still wanted to do other things even when they were a "lesson learned" instead of an "Ooooo, let's do that again!" moment.
I have stood on stages and told the people in the audience, "Make a podcast for yourself because you want to and enjoy the experience. Do it for you." Which is not so dissimilar to what Tom's message except I think he brings a broader context to the idea.
I do enjoy "making my art" and when others find value in it, that's a bonus. The real win for me is in doing it solely for myself.
