Cause I gotta tell you I wanted to… Believe me. This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to start writing content to share on the internet! There’s numerous abandoned blogs with my name hidden somewhere in them littering the crevices of the internet… Stick around and maybe I’ll share some of them with you! See if you laugh or cringe - I did a little of both!
How many of you, I wonder, have given up on something that your soul has longed for you to pursue? Been led somewhere by your intuition only to fall at the first, second or umpteenth hurdle? (And, to help out those of you who don’t speak fluent Britishisms, umpteenth = …)
Maybe you stick with something for a while, enjoying the process, feeling resolved to stay the course. But the momentum fades, the applause and lavish cries of your multitudes of fans never come. So it falls by the wayside. Another story left untold. How does that make you feel?
The Pattern I Keep I Kept (!!) Repeating
The Digital Graveyard (of Hopes and Dreams)
Today I’m gonna talk a bit about the dilemma of the digital age, and how it affects our convictions and our psyches. The constant assault of social media content leaves you satiated on some level, your eyeballs popping with newsfeeds, memes and “viral” dances, but on another you are hankering for the one morsel of realness contained in the vacuum. I know that’s what draws me to “content creators”, as much as I hate to use that phrasing - it’s an accurate definition, I can’t dispute it!
I’ve probably started 3 or 4 blogs over the last 10 years. The reason for that is I just freaking love to write, and I thought why not share it? But here’s the kicker. The average time that I probably stuck with writing to them with any consistency? A month… Maybe. If I’m being generous! And yet somehow I’ve managed to be consistent with so many other areas of my life, for as long as I can remember.
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Exercise for 15 years plus.
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A nutritious and healthy (most of the time!) diet for about the same amount of time.
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A sleep regimen (aside from when I was deployed with the Navy) for freaking ever?!
What’s so different about the idea of publicly sharing thoughts and feelings that creates the block? I discussed this topic a little in my previous post on Fear of Success & Failure - My Invisible Cage… And I thought I’d dive into it a little more today.
Everyone’s an Influencer, if they’re Brave Enough
It has never been easier to share anything that you want to share. The World-Wide Web (www, does it make sense now?!) or the internet has globalised the world, brought us all in contact with each other and made it incredibly easy to share thoughts, feelings, images, videos and anything you can create through a screen.
But it’s also never been harder. For every beautiful model’s instagram there is a Nudify app that propagates their innocent Instagram photos around their school (no, really, that’s a thing…) For every introspective moment there’s a thousand others who’ve had the same realisation and worded it with an infinitesimally tiny difference to the way it played out in your head. For every beautiful travel video you’ve shot on your “Adventure of a Lifetime” there’s 20 pro videographers who’ve done it better.
So why bother?
That question has replayed millions of times in my head. And I’m genuinely not exaggerating in the slightest with that number. For 6 years I ran a fitness business. For 2 of those years I tried (and for the most part failed) to take it online. Mostly because I could never keep up any kind of consistency with Instagram, and as we probably all know, fitness and Instagram are now joined at the hip.
As I said before, I’ve sat down to write blog posts. But ultimately, when I look back at them I see pseudo-intellectual self-aggrandising waffle that’s been said before in numerous different ways. Then again, that was a pretty guarded kid trying to find his voice. And receiving basically no feedback from the world - and for obvious reasons. Nothing about it was distinguishing. And I don’t know why I let that bother me! Actually, that’s a lie - yes I do. Because I was doing it more in the vainglorious hope of external validation than actually JUST WRITING FOR ME.
Breaking Free From the Cycle
Because I Want To, That’s Why!
I spoke in the last post about the book, the poems, the short stories that gather dust on physical or digital bookcases in the wake of my life’s constant beat. I suspect you have the same, in whichever form your particular creative expression takes. And I suspect that you, too, want to share them.
I’ve read a few of my poems aloud over the years here and there - in small gatherings of the open mic or cacao circle variety, to ex-girlfriends (as a flex) and in occasional conversation with close friends. But all of those are controlled environments, where I could have my guard up safely.
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Either the person across from me was a known quantity who I felt safe with in advance of sharing,
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Or it was a throwaway environment where I could feel confident that I would never see the person/people again - so if they hate it, who cares?
Sharing things on the internet is not so temporary. There are plenty of things immortalised on the internet that some amongst us probably wish would never see the light of day. But they might.
But the kind of immortality the internet provides doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It’s also a gift, a time capsule that will long outlast me and probably my children and grandchildren (if I have them - defs not there yet!)
Legacy Thinking
It doesn’t really matter if you lean toward ambition or not any more. The inner tension you feel between defaulting to brain-dead apathetic consumption and the inner overwhelm when faced click-through rates (CTRs), audience retention and affiliate marketing is going to be as much of a staple in 2025 and beyond as drinking water and breathing. But it’s not something to concern yourself with anyway, unless you care to.
Whether you want to be on the 30 Under 30, the Rich List, Time magazines front cover or simply part of the PTA, a good Best Man or Woman to your high-school buddies and an above-average employee, what you think matters. What you feel matters. And what you share and how you share matters too.
The default state of the internet is pretty dire right now. The wrong stuff gets noticed for the wrong reasons, and many diligent and skilled creators get nothing but tumbleweed through their digital doors. It is what it is.
Insert Exhibit A - one tumbleweed blog below…
It only changes if we let our voices be heard. So this blog is me finding the inner courage to share my voice with the world in a permanent way, and I hope that it leads me somewhere interesting. I hope that one or two people find it thought-provoking. Those hopes may be met, and they may not, and that is quite honestly outside of my control (beyond making it findable and directing people to it, anyway…) Instead it lies in the hands of the Google/ChatGPT algorithms, people’s curious natures and luck. And that’s an uncertainty that I can willingly accept.
So let me ask you…
What’s the thing you’ve been wanting to say, but haven’t found the courage to yet? What’s gathering dust in your digital, physical or metaphorical bookcase?
SK.
P.S. - If you got this far, you deserve to see the Easter egg… https://journalofadevelopingman.wordpress.com. Go easy!
P.P.S. - I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. If you want to write to me personally, you can leave a comment, or I can be reached on sam@samue.lk. I will reply to all emails, on that you have my word!