Now and then I find myself landing on some blog post or other which tries to define How To Be A Successful Blogger. Tips usually include things like: post regularly, keep to a theme, get out there and visit lots of other blogs, link, comment, interact… Just recently I came across one such post that a bit unexpectedly ended with the conclusion (rephrased by me): “sorry, readers, I did all this, and was successful - but I can’t keep it up”.
It made me ponder about how we define success. Not just in blogging! - but let’s stick to that for now, to simplify things.
Really: How many followers should a blogger have to be counted as successful? How many page views? How many comments on average per post? How many… Oh, never mind…
Every now and then I find that I’m letting myself get stressed by goals set up by someone else – and not set up for me, but for them. How stupid is that?
Every time I do that, I have to go back to my own beginning, and ask myself: What goals did I set for myself?
If we stick to blogging… In my very first blog post ever (January 2009), I wrote: “I really have no clear idea yet what hidden things I want this blog to make visible. But maybe if I start writing, I will find out...”
I had hardly even read other blogs until I started my own. I had never heard the word “meme”. I knew one (1) person in the blogosphere. It seemed unbelievable that anyone else would ever just randomly find what I wrote. (That took two weeks, I think.) But I was curious to explore a bit more. I wanted to keep up writing, and the English language. And if I made some friends along the way, that would be great. That was about it…
Considering those goals (which did not include numbers of any kind), I’ve been “successful”. I’ve done a lot of exploring. I’ve kept writing. I’m communicating with other people in English. Some people across the earth whom I’ve never met have come to feel like close friends. On top of that I’ve expanded my photo interest – a lot. And after nearly two years I’m still here, enjoying it, feeling inspired by it…
… except when occasionally for obscure reasons I start to compare myself to goals set by other people who are not me.
Why does one do that?!
Letting oneself get inspired by others is one thing.
Letting oneself get exhausted is another.
“The term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads swiftly via the Internet. --- In simple terms, an Internet meme is an inside joke, that a large number of Internet users are in on.”
Wikipedia
The pictures in this post are all from today (5 October 2010)
