Case in point: this blog.
I am using this as a journal to write my thoughts as I fight for my
exodus from the corporate world. Writing
this blog post is natural for me, and to be honest, impractical in the world’s
eyes. It really isn’t what a blog should
be – I am not writing for an audience or really trying to get readership. Although readers would be nice.
This impracticality has also caused issues at my job in the
past. I want the actuarial answer that I
come up with to be the right answer regardless of what others think about
it. Even if it contradicts what I said
before. Even if I can’t articulate
clearly why the answer is correct. I
want the answer to be right. But when we
have folks care less about the right answer and more about looking right, we
have issues. Thankfully, that is not the
case here, but I have had that issue at previous work places.
My impracticality ties into what I wrote a little while back
about the true self. This is who I am
and I should embrace it – at least to the best of my ability. This is a great route to go in order to be
fulfilled in doing what I am doing, but how does that jive with trying to get
myself running with unjobbing? As I
alluded to before – being fulfilled doesn’t feed you. Even for the most impractical, we have to
find practical ways to be impractical.
The whole reason I wanted to write this post was that my
wife shared with me a blog from a lady who provides blogger advice. Some of the info was good and others not so
much. But one piece that irked me more
than a little was this: content is not king. In fact, she estimates that a successful blog
as a business should use 20% of its time writing content and 80% in
promotion. I took that to be a
de-emphasis on what we write about and an over emphasis on fighting for traffic. But that isn’t why I blog. I blog because I like to write.
I then look to some of my favorite internet sensations like
xkcd.com, homestarrunner.com, and the Oatmeal.
The one thing that I love about all three of these is that I can tell
without a doubt that they are doing what they do. They do it with gusto – and people love
it. Now I didn’t happen upon any of
these because of promotion – it was word of mouth. And I have heard that a lot – the most
effective way to get an idea contagious is by word of mouth. And the way you do that is make stuff that
people want to talk about – build your content!
That has been my mantra for years.
I am staring down the barrel of a couple of projects that
will see the light of day. I finished my
Christian metal CD (yay!) and I will be releasing that for free. Way to
go Sven on getting that income! Yeah
yeah…I know. But Christian metal is what
I do – music in general, but metal more often than not. Not only am I releasing it for free, but I am
going to re-release my back catalog for free.
In a way, I am putting money where my mouth is – well my no money where
my mouth is – and building up that content that is available. But even though the content is freely out
there, I still haven’t become popular.
Should I get to promoting it?
By no means am I saying that promotion is bad. In order to make a living, people have got to
know that you are out there. But I think
that there is a line that we should refrain from crossing – like when we start
to badger folks. I really think that
content should remain king; what we do really matters most. When we de-emphasize our work in deference to
promotion, we become mere mirages of our previous mission.
The point is this – why did I do Christian metal? Did I do this for fans? For money?
No – I do this because this is what I do. Even if I didn’t change the world, it meant a
lot for me to do it in the first place.
And for my internet sensations above – I think that they would do what
they do because that is what they do. I
think that when we do that, we do better work.
The world is a better place. When
we start to focus on trying to get a certain reaction out of what we do (like
get fans and the ilk) then it lessens the potency of our work and we have to
prop it up through promotion.
So don’t expect ads for EYKIW in the future or spam
e-mails. But, you know, it wouldn’t hurt
to share it if you feel so inclined. But
whether you do or not – I’ll still be doing what I do.
God bless,
Sven
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