29 May 2020
Part I: Validation
May 20th 2020:
It’s the day proceeding my audacious post on Instagram, where in a moment of shameless self-promotion, I announced to the insta-sphere that I had begun to publish my thoughts on a personal blog.
I was nervous, doubtful, and anxious about how my post would be received and yet, much to my delight, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Within minutes of the upload, I was bombarded with hits of dopamine and serotonin while that glorious red notification graced my screen, alerting me to the likes or comments the post began to accumulate.
This particular afternoon, I had decided it would be an appropriate time to check the insights and statistics on my blog. As the WordPress logo did it’s loading dance across my screen, my anticipation heightened: a concoction of nerves bubbling excitedly in my stomach.
Once the curtain came down on my little loading logo, I was welcomed by my home page, where a towering blue graph had taken centre stage. I summoned my pointer as it skirted its way across my screen, hovering over the blue goliath. Under the graph were the words: May 20th: 241 views.
My excitement shot through the roof! Holy moly! 241 views. As far as I was concerned, I had just hit the blogging big leagues!
241 people had visited my blog and read my ramblings. 241 individual hits of dopamine and serotonin surged (pardon the pun) through my body, elevating my mood and fuelling a fire deep in my belly, affirming every reason I needed to continue to write and publish my thoughts online.
Unfortunately, that high didn’t last forever…
Part II: Discovery
May 27th, 2020:
The week after my ‘five minutes of fame’, I came to a startling realisation.
A few days earlier, I was scouring the shelves of a local bookstore in Paddington that specialises in coffee and second-hand books – although, according to my brother, “They don’t know how to do almond lattes”.
I was traversing the non-fiction section when Ryan Holiday’s Trust Me, I’m Lying jumped out at me. “Confessions of a Media Manipulator” read the subtitle as I read on, perplexed, opening the book into the introduction:
By the end of this book, you’ll see that we have a media system designed to trick, cajole, and steal every second of the most precious resource in the world–people’s time. I’m going to show you every single one of these tricks, and what they mean.
What you choose to do with this information is up to you.
Had I just discovered the bible of blogging?
I certainly felt that it was by some divine intervention that this book had ended up in my hands. Armed with Holiday’s sermons, I strutted out of the shop, almond latteless, but nevertheless, a feeling of confidence; a wave of faith.
I was going to apply every single one of these tricks and tactics to grow and expand my blog, well beyond the 241 views that I had received the week prior.
Part III: Education
As I started into the book, I began scribbling insights and segments of information into a notebook, that I found to be of importance to me in growing my personal blog. This notebook now also contained an array of my personal ideas, and thoughts that I had begun to cumulate over the last few days and would hopefully serve as inspiration for later posts.
My first entry on May 25th 2020, a reflection on my decision to make my blog public:
Publish your art man – the world needs it. Why do we hold back – is it our own anxiety and self-doubt about judgements we may receive?
While I believed this to be accurate, I was missing a vital piece of that puzzle. What if I didn’t have any art to publish?
In previous posts, I had found that in the process of writing, the ideas and concepts would come tumbling out; allowing me to purge my thoughts onto the paper, before I judge and pick them apart.
Finding things to write about felt natural and easy. At University, we called this bulls***. I conjured up many a last minute assignment, simply relying on my ability to BS my way through the criteria.
Regardless, despite my best efforts to spark some fragment of inspiration, to ignite my imagination, nothing in my notebook or otherwise was resonating and as a result, I begun to feel pressured into finding something to write about; some art to publish.
Enter Ryan Holiday.
I came across a passage in Trust Me, I’m Lying that radically shifted my attitude; this desire to get something, anything out and published! In a section titled, “Traffic is Money”, Holiday writes:
An article that provides worthwhile advice is no more valuable than one instantly forgotten. So long as the page loads and the ads are seen, both sides are fulfilling their purpose. A click is a click.
Knowing this, blogs do everything they can to increase the latter variable in the equation (traffic, pageviews). It’s how you must understand them as a business. Every decision a publisher makes is ruled by one dictum: Traffic by any means.
In this section, Holiday explains that because of this, the quality of the blog is not what matters, it is the quantity– the more content an online publisher or blogger can produce, the more likely they are to get page views and traffic, which in turn leads to profit.
In short:
- Content produced in huge quantitates = page views and traffic = profit
And that’s when it hit me.
Without realising, I had been playing the blogging game. I had been abiding by the same formula as outlined above even when there was no financialincentive to pressure me into producing content.
The currency I was operating under?
Time.
I wanted viewership and traffic as this equated with people’s time spent on my site. And the longer they spend on my site, the more hits of dopamine and serotonin my monkey brain gets to experience. Unconsciously, I had begun to crave the validation that time and attention bought me.
Part IV: Reflection
Enter Ryan Holiday once again. (Starting to notice a bit of a theme here?)
As I sat there, passage in hand, sitting with the realisation that I had allowed my desire to help, to turn into a self-satiating validation machine, another one of Holiday’s books tugged at my memory:
Like numerous times previous to this occurrence, and most likely, numerous times after, I have and will fall victim to my ego.
Three lines in Ego is the Enemy encapsulate this concept perfectly:
Not to aspire or seek out of ego
To have success without ego
To push through failure with strength, not ego.
Turns out, I missed the boat on most those fronts: my desperate re-post of a snippet of one of my blog posts to Instagram perfectly exemplifying this.
So where do I go from here?
For starters, I will continue to write.
As I’ve discovered through writing this post, and several others, the process of collating my thoughts (some may call it a form of journaling), helps me to decipher, explore and extrapolate the relevant and interesting pieces of information that I believe are worthwhile sharing.
Regardless of the views that these posts may receive, I have found it an invaluable form of communicating and articulating my thoughts, that I believe, serves me well beyond the blog-sphere.
But, am I a blogger?
If a blogger, as discussed in Trust Me, I’m Lying, is someone who’s job is to produce immense amounts of content, chase the news and generate click bait for the masses to latch onto, then no, I am not a blogger.
I am, like all of us, an experience sharer. The difference lies in the medium I have chosen to do so: my personal blog.
Maybe I do still unconsciously crave the validation; the hits of dopamine and serotonin that light up my brain every time that love heart on my Instagram feed shows up. An argument here may be that if we are all truly self-motivated, directed and secure, then we shouldn’t need the validation–the feedback from others to fuel our process.
So what is the alternative: Not sharing anything at all?
The way I see it is, that it is far better to have put myself out there; to have engaged fully and to the best of my ability, to discover, educate and finally reflect, having gained something invaluable: an authentic experience.
If this reflection doesn’t reach the heights of May 20th, that’s okay. If my blog in its entirety never musters 241 viewer’s again, that’s okay.
Because I am not playing the blogging game. I am playing my game; and the blog-sphere gives me the privilege of sharing it in the hopes that someone may find these reflections just as valuable.
Because it’s not the 241 views that matter. It’s the fact that there was something to view at all.
Part V: Your Turn
. . .
CHANGE IS THE POINT 