WHY I BOTHER WITH… BLOGGING
Words by: JEREMY/HI54LOFI
Original draft was written in the early hours of 2018's first hangover. Re-posted during future hangovers because who’s got the energy to write new blog posts every day/week/month, amirite? (also sometimes I make small edits/changes because that’s allowed when you are the only writer / editor / publisher / reader)
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Blogging wears you down.
It's an operation fuelled almost entirely by fleeting moments of inspiration — little blinking glimpses of a light that's always on the verge of being snuffed out by the unrelenting waves of doubt that crash into any who dare sail The Blahg Sea. And if Moby Dick has taught us anything, it is that a life at sea will break a soul like no other (full disclosure: I've never read Moby Dick so I am just assuming that was the gist of the book).
But when your siren calls, you go. And if that means getting in your DIY dingy and heading out into the cold and unforgiving waters, without a paddle, that's what you do. Days after weeks after months, you do it over and over and over again. And you do it even though you’re not very good at it and you're possibly not sure you even like it anymore—a fact you will continuously remind yourself of each time you push ‘Publish’ and sit down to wait impatiently with the crickets for someone to find your bottled message.
It seems a foolish thing to trouble with, so why bother?
Well, for starters, everybody sucks at everything in the beginning. Blogging is no different. And unlike tying one's shoelaces—a skill that only took me a solid day + a $5 bribe from Grandma to master—running a blog is much more complex. There is no “pull the rabbit 'round the tree” technique to follow for success. There is only a bunch of different moving parts, some of which are invisible, some literal, some figurative, all of them always changing, and not one comes with any reliable instructions (or pay cheque). And since you will suck at handling each one of those different moving parts at varying levels of inadequacy, the combination of all that sucking is going to take some time to work out.
And, unfortunately, there is no other way around it.
You suck at new things and you suck at them for awhile, that’s just the way it goes for everyone and everything. And even when you think you've started to suck less, there will always be plenty of people out there who'll disagree with you. Just ask Lebron James (or one of the many people who feel confident in loudly saying he “sucks”).
But if everyone sucks (and everybody does to somebody), it doesn’t really matter that you suck too — so just enjoy the process of getting better at things you enjoy doing and would like to get better at (even if nobody is paying you, which is the part that really sucks the most once you get better at not worrying about other people thinking you suck).
Here’s a handy thought to keep in your back pocket for whenever you’re feeling the fake scariness of thinking someone else might discover that you’re not perfect at something you dare to do in front of others (whether IRL or out on the URLs):
I am completely independent of the good and bad opinions of others. They are literally just made-up thoughts in somebody else’s head (and those people are probably already thinking about something else besides whether I suck or not, because brains are constantly running infinite thoughts to think about, so I should/could think about something more useful too).
If you’re like me, your first reaction to reading words like that might be something like, “yeah, yeah, yeah… sticks and stones may break my bones but blah blah blah blah blah me" — but that reaction glosses over the fact that our childhood Sticks & Stones advice only warns us about “the bad opinions” of others. What about “the good opinions” of others? Can they break my bones (or similar metaphorical damage) too?
Previously, I had always considered the suggestion of not worrying about what others say/think as a technique that could/should only be used for dealing with negativity (and if you’ve ever bawled your eyes out while at the same time crying back at your verbal tormentors - “…but words will never hurt me!!!” - that technique often felt like more of a failed thought experiment than a useful coping mechanism). But, I have to admit, it never occurred to me until later in life how the same advice could/should also be used when dealing with something nice, like praise. Positive approval feels positive after all, so why wouldn't you accept it with loving and open arms (and then spend every waking minute looking for more of it in every nook and cranny you can find)? But I can see now that trying to ignore the bad opinions while still giving weight to the good ones is no way to handle an ‘Other People's Opinions’ problem.
To use a mouse analogy: if you keep the bad mice out but let the good mice in… you will still have mice in your house (and, therefore, you will still have a mouse problem). Also, sometimes the bad mice look a lot like the good mice (especially when creating) — but the important thing to remember with this analogy is that a ‘Mouse (whether good or bad) = Someone Else’s Opinion (and whether good or bad, it’s still someone else’s opinion / a mouse that you’re letting in).
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So, no matter what the thing is—blogging, meditating, music, basketballing—make peace with the fact that you will suck at first. Know that you will only get better by working through that sucking stage. And don’t get caught up in worrying about whether people are telling you that you’re doing “good” or “bad” (just trust your own intuition, it’s what got you in this ‘trying to express something’ situation in the first place). And since the sucking stage can take a long time, you probably want to start thinking of it as The Learning Stage instead of The Sucking Stage. It not only sounds more positive, but it's also more accurate to the process. Because compassion and patience aren’t just meant for cute little kids and old little grandparents, you should show it to yourself too.
F*ck the haters and thank the likers if you must (and it sometimes feels like you must—or at least I hear that showing gratitude is important and exacting revenge is sweet) but right after you ignore/acknowledge them, make sure you then forget about them both completely. Because, good or bad, they're still metaphorical mouses in your metaphorical houses. And mice sh*t everywhere—so, if you let them in, make sure you don’t let them stay very long (I think this is basically the same thing the Buddhists are talking about when they talk about attraction & aversion, more or less).
Because the sooner you stop giving so much gravity to the opinions of others—the bad ones and the good ones; the real ones and the imagined ones—the sooner you can focus on just enjoying the challenge of trying to get better at doing whatever the thing is that you’re too busy worrying about someone else thinking you might suck at to start.
And isn't that kinda the whole point of life… continuously trying to get a little bit better at the things that bring us a little bit a joy?
And so, to circle back to the top, I think this is why I bother blogging:
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Even though the logical gauges of society suggest I should do otherwise, I keep coming back to it because I think having a blog puts me in a better place of understanding myself than wherever the version of me that gave up before starting would be at now. It's almost as if fractionally improving on each of the moving parts that come with running a blog—the writing, the designing, the networking, the collaborating, the editing, the creating, the strategizing, the prioritizing, the putting yourself out there, the learning how to find contentment when there’s no payment for all the hours/work you put in, the stick-to-it-ness, the adapting, the contemplating & all the et cetera-ing… well, it's almost as if those are some pretty useful skills to routinely work on sucking less at each day.
But, boy oh boy, does the pay ever suck :)
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So please feel free to leave your good or bad mouses in the comments section below (I promise to only let them in for a bit of cheese and then straight back out the door).
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JEREMY / @HI54LOFI
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