It's Monday morning, and I wish I didn't have to work.
Of course, none of us "have to" work; our individual lives are more accurately represented by a long string of choices and their attendant consequences. I choose to work, so I can have shelter, food and indoor plumbing. I could choose not to work, and score the reward of living in a gutter.
Life is pretty simple, for the most part.
Anyway, as I distracted myself with things not-related-to-working, I was considering one of my favorite pastimes: writing.
Blogging, Blogging, Blogging...
Somehow, I ended up visiting my first post on my oldest (still active) blog.
Sailing on the bay...
It's from September 26th, 2002, and talks about "starting down a new road," that road being my first niche blog — in this case related to Sensory Processing Sensitivity.
Even though you pretty much never catch me talking about that here, I'm actually somewhat of an authority and expert in that particular field.
But that's not the point.
The point is that that particular blog was not my first, by any means. And definitely not my last. I wrote about psychology, I wrote about gardening, I wrote about the Enneagram, I wrote about consciousness and personal development, I wrote about beach combing, I wrote about the history of sea glass, I wrote about collecting ols postage stamps... and along the way I kept several personal journals.
Although now defunct, "Inner Reflections" was one of those personal journals (it went away when mega social blogging site Xanga went away) — I mention it only because it was essentially the precursor to the rambles I make some of you suffer through here, ten years later.
ENOUGH of the mini history lesson...
Millions and Millions of Words
Anyway, in looking at all these bloggish things and meandering down memory lane... I ended up doing a little number crunching and came to the very sad realization that in the course cruising the Interwebz, I have scattered at least ten million random words out there.
Flowers in our yard
Ten. Million. Words.
If any of you ever had to work your way through Tolstoy's "War and Peace," that's pretty close to the longest novel ever written... twenty times over.
"Well, congratulations Denmarkguy, that's amazing! Please upvote my post and follow me!"
You're completely missing the point.
The point I am trying to get to is that here we have 20 years of writing, and pretty much nobody gives a shit.
I still have to get up in the morning, make the coffee, scoop the cat boxes, whip out some random words like this and go to work.
And so do you, because pretty much nobody gives a shit.
The "Magic" of the Internet and Self Publishing
The wonderful thing about the Internet is that it gave pretty much everybody with a keyboard the access to instant self-publishing.
The horrible thing about the Internet is that it gave pretty much everybody with a keyboard the access to instant self-publishing.
So now pretty much everybody can call themselves "a writer," and the Universe is filled with 10-million word "portfolios" pretty much nobody gives a shit about.
But Now We Have Steemit!
Sure we do!
And therefore, comma....?
Apricot Blossoms
Granted, this place got started with some degree of fanfare surrounding previously unpaid bloggers being paid for their content, and an underlying idea that Steemit could become this amazing repository of information, based on the glorious notion that because "The Blockchain Records Things Forever" people would add their very best quality content and we would have this encyclopedic repository of The Human Experience.
Sadly, that's not really where we are, is it?
Instead we have millions of words being generated again, that pretty much nobody gives a shit about.
More likely, we have this slightly surreal "cash grab" in which a bunch of people put lots of effort into being seemingly "relevant" and "important," in the hopes that someone with the resources to do so will throw them a few crumbs.
To my eye, there's actually something slightly ironic and marvelously symmetrical about that: Steemit IS a strange repository of The Human Experience... except it's the ugly, seedy, greedy TRUE version, not the "idealized" version at first pitched by Steemit's creators.
Do You Have a Point Here?
If there is a point here — aside from the one at the top of my head — I suppose it concerns the numerous voices of disillusionment of many who lament that "their content doesn't get seen or read" here.
Evening light over the lake
Of course it doesn't!
Odds are your content doesn't get seen or read anywhere; I'm pretty sure none of mine does. The deeper question is why you would think Steemit is any different?
Because there are rewards?
What on planet Pluto (I know, it's not a planet...) makes you think that the presence of "rewards" would make you dank meme more interesting than when you posted it to tumblr?
Use your common sense, people!
On any given social venue — past or present — less than one percent of all users become "stars." Less than 1/100th of one percent become "superstars."
Even at the peak for some of my best niche blogs, 1000 readers a day was a really big deal.
I don't know how many readers I have here on Steemit, but given that my average post gets somewhere in the 50-100 upvote range, it's just not that many.
Not that I'm not grateful to you guys!
Yeah, I know SHAME on me for being a realist!
Just go out there and do your best; and ENJOY yourself! Writing stuff can be a lot of fun, and so can interacting with your 10, 20 or 50 authentic followers. So be grateful for that!
Now... I need to go to work. Because Steemit is not my job, and nobody ever promised me it would be!
Going to go a little more free-form on the comments, here. I invite you to share your thoughts, feelings, impressions, commentaries and rants about writing, online content creation, Steemit or whatever comes to mind! But do leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!
Animated banner created by @zord189
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 180618 09:22 PDT