My wife is sitting next to me, watching me work on my short story for hours upon hours. I seemed to be overtaken by something, and I simply could not stop. She looks at me for a second, calls my name and tells me "If this story doesn't do good, don't take it personal, I think it's great"
Of course that made me smile, and of course I thanked her for her kindness, but that interaction got me thinking today, and thus I'm castigating my keyboard once more.
Forgive the detour my friend, but I find it necessary. You see, there's a video on Youtube that for a while was probably one of the most viral videos in the world. And even thought that video is amazing and hilarious, it existed for years before anyone actually found it.
The drummer playing on said video eventually renamed the video, out of the blue too, and all of the sudden everyone found it. I can't remember what the original name of the video was, but "Drummer at the wrong gig" has all the elements it needs to evoke clicking.
The success or lack thereof on the ideas we post here does not necessarily mean that the post is not good. It could easily mean that the post was not found, not seen by the right audience.
I've been riding a political wave lately, and even though is not a subject that dominates this space (currently at least), I do so because this blog of mine is about being honest with myself.
I come here to write down how I see life today, how I think about tomorrow and what I think I learnt about the past. In a way you could say I'm time capsuling myself, my mind.
Spending hours writing something or making a video for that matter, and having nobody read it or see it can be disappointing, but it's certainly not a waste of time.
The way I see it, even if it makes nothing, not even a penny, I still polished ideas, questioned the world and introspected, and none of those activities can be considered pointless.
I'm not going to lie and say I don't like to get upvotes, that would be dishonest of me, but in the almost eight years I've been here I've lived through all the stages of support you can think of, and my creative output didn't depend solely on that.
If anyone is even curious about how I see this whole blogging thing. I would say this.
Write because it's your outlet, because it's the way you let the world know you existed. Don't write to please, to be loved, to be famous, to be important, because all the people that chase those things end up crashing and burning anyways.
If you are lucky a few people will notice and support what you do. Maybe not with upvotes, but maybe with comments of encouragement of even ones that challenge your ideas. Comments can be more valuable to your development that a anon-whale-bot front running a curation trail trying to maximize returns. (something that happens here quite a bit)
In the end, worry about leaving some footprints, that's all, but make sure they are footprints that you can be proud of.
MenO
