In case you couldn’t tell from last week’s column, I’m back! I never really left and am still gainfully employed by Pierce County’s favorite newspaper, but my column writing had not just fallen off, it crash landed somewhere seemingly beyond repair.
No one seemed to notice or care. No emails. No letters. No questions on the street. No “Hey, Greg, what happened to your column?”
I am obviously a very little fish in a little pond. Nor is my column the only time my creative output has fallen off the map and no one sent out a search party.
Late last year, I set a creative challenge for myself. Every day I would create and draw a new comic book character, be they hero, villain, monster or whatever. The goal was to see how long I could maintain the streak. For 125 consecutive days I posted all manner of weird heroes and alien menaces in an online group for mostly just my friends and fellow geeks to enjoy.
A few months ago, when life got in the way and I suddenly stopped uploading new entries, not one single person said a thing. They didn’t ask if I had decided to stop. They didn’t encourage me to keep going.
Crickets. I remember being disappointed, yet unsurprised. I also remember asking myself, well, what were you really doing it for? Likes and praise—or to challenge yourself?
All of which is to say, if you are going to do something, make sure you are doing it for yourself.
Mind you, I don’t mean this in the larger, more ridiculous “greed is good” extreme some people will take that statement. Obviously, if you are going to fight for justice, you seek justice for all. If you want to make a better world, you make it better for everyone, not just a select few.
Basically, if you have the urge to create, an idea to share, a vision to illustrate, an opinion to espouse, first and foremost, do it for yourself. It has to be fulfilling to you in and of itself.
I realize that runs counter to prevailing wisdom in the age of social media. It’s all about the clicks, the likes and shares and follower counts. These days, it isn’t so much about having something to say as having anything one says validated. Even someone “hate-sharing” your meme or video is seen as better than being ignored. None of which means you are doing something worthwhile, but does that even matter in the era of mercenary monetization?
Everything is click bait. It’s the reason why “articles” on social media deliberately don’t name the movie or song or historical figure in the main post. You have to click to read the rest, discovering the answer to the most obvious question in the comments or on another website entirely. Traffic matters, the measurable click through rate, not the actual content itself.
It’s been quite surreal to see click-chasing culture develop online, mutating—or perhaps metastasizing—in real time. It even makes me glad I’m still stuck between two worlds, torn between an analog past and a virtual future, trying to crank out prose in a print medium. At least the response or lack thereof is based around the writing itself, not how temptingly it has been marketed online.
None of which lets the audience off the hook. If you enjoy something, let people know. You might be surprised how a few measly words of encouragement can make a creator’s day.
A nice couple recently came in to renew their subscription to The Blackshear Times. As I processed their payment, they asked about my columns, said they had noticed I wasn’t writing many recently.
Imagine how my face lit up when they said my columns were one of the reasons they subscribed to the paper.
Sometimes a few words of encouragement is all it takes. I’m back to writing my column again. I’m doing it for myself, but also for that nice couple.
If you’re not a fan, blame them.
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