Confession time: I often get sucked into taking various online quizzes about this that and the other!
No, I don’t stoop to ”What color unicorn are you?” or ”What kind of cornflake are you?” types of quizzes, yet I must have taken hundreds of quizzes relating to personality, aptitude and how those tie into finding some form of meaningful work or passion in life.
These ”tests” have consistently revealed pretty much the same thing for several decades: I don’t care in which direction the crowd (or “popular opinion”) is headed, I’ll do my own thing... but at the same time, I am also not ”actively contrarian” in rejecting mass-think because if the crowd seems to be heading in a direction I agree with, I’ll happily be part of the crowd for as long as it seems appropriate.
Late fall...
As I am sure many of you are aware, going ”against the flow” tends to be exhausting, because in many cases you find yourself working twice as hard for half the results... because the world is not designed to accommodate you, and sometimes it is actually designed to actively work against you because if you succeed, it might cast a tiny shadow of doubt on the validity of majority opinion.
There’s a certain irony in that, in so far as the world generally admires the world’s ”Pioneers” but at the same time also does whatever it can to get in their way and make life difficult for them.
I distinctly remember trying to get a bank loan for a new (import/retail) business that was essentially a new concept and finding my path continuously blocked and rejected by commercial banks... and even had a couple of bankers suggest that I open something ”more conventional” like a video store (dating myself, here!) that was tried and true… and an utterly oversaturated market.
All that said, I am definitely not a so-called ”pot stirrer!” I have met plenty of people who are also pioneers — in their own way — but for them it was for the purpose of provoking and changing culture, and rattling people's cages... simply for the sport of it.
In my case, I truly just don’t CARE; I’m just trying to do my own thing that seems to fit my needs best, and that often happens to involve striking out in a direction nobody else cares for.
But — to come full circle, here — it is exhausting, because you’re definitely not ”going with the flow.”
And to touch on the second part of the title of this post, it is typically also not very profitable in the sense that what you may want isn’t often relevant or interesting to anyone else, and thus not commercially marketable. It might be — 10 years from now — but that doesn't help anyone buy groceries tomorrow.
I’ve found myself on the ”receiving end” of that particular reality more times than I care to think about!
The “sunny patch” in the middle of all this is the realization that I am not a Pioneer to please or piss off any particular external element, nor because it’s a useful form of clickbait to be an outlier.
As I said above, I don’t CARE.
But let me clarify: That doesn’t mean that I don’t care about whatever successes and interactions come my way, just that my sense of self and sense of direction are not contingent upon them.
In some ways, it's a bit like a Hive post: It's awesome if people love it and upvote it and give it accolades, but my world won't collapse if they don't."
Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your week!
How about YOU? Do you tend to be an Outlier/Pioneer type, or are you more likely to stick to the tried and true? Does it matter to you whether your endeavors are "well liked," or do you pursue them, regardless? Have you started any businesses or projects that were radically different from anything else out there? How did it go? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20220307 20:05 PST
0517/1763