Aren’t you enough?
I don’t really mean you, per se. I mean the plural you. All of you reading this.
Shouldn’t you be enough?
Addressed directly, personalizing the question – I’m now imagining faces and names I know – the answer is obvious. Yes. You are enough. The mere fact that you group of people are interested in reading this is flattering. When you write me emails, or mention in conversation that you like what I’m writing, my face gets warm and I am positively delighted that someone actually enjoys my efforts.
But in the abstract: considering you readers as numbered, faceless masses, of course I want more. I want more Facebook clicks, more email opens, more shares, more you. The more people reading what I write means more recognition, more status, more importance.
I admit: Not far under the surface lurks a wish that my ticky-tacky writing will find a bigger, broader audience. One that will recognize me as the next, great American voice. One who speaks truth about our world and our souls!
My grandiose dreams seem downright laughable when considering “Middling Industries”. I mean it’s a BLOG for God’s sake. But when considering clicks, opens, shares and all that, how can you not consider the thought? When our personal experiences, our personal interactions are reduced to numbers and metrics, isn’t it natural to wonder, “Wouldn’t it be great if I saw 4,000 shares rather than just two?”
Our social mediaized world has given us piles of metrics with which to judge the velocity of our words. How many people are reading me? Are my cat pics popular? My rant about Trump? Or Pelosi? Post often enough and you can figure out what’s popular; what people want to see. My Facebook series #wouldyoueatthis has a following, but why aren’t more of you liking and sharing it?
You’re great. But you’re just not enough. It has turned personal communications into a commodity.
Last month I interviewed my friend Ruth Nawrocki, who decided to leave Facebook and social media, because Facebook was, “not actual interaction because your emotions [are] played. You end up feeling exhausted.” She has a point, and I’ve been thinking about her decision quite a bit since then. Why not just quit social media?
I can’t though, because of the kind of work I do, political communications. I don’t feel like I can really afford to leave social media. Too much happens there that I can’t miss.
But, if I can’t remove the toxicity of social media’s NOWness and commoditization of the personal, what can I do to slow things down, increase my attention to the personal?
Tim Carmody, a veteran blogger at Kottke.org, suggests that back in the 90’s and early naughts the blogosphere engendered a much slower, more considerate environment. While I wasn’t really blogging much then, I did read a lot of blogs (Kottke since 2001, for instance) and I admit, the bloggers and their commenters did create a tight, friendly environment. Two friends of mine, Erin Shea Smith with ejshea.com and Rachelle Bowden with rachelleb.com, have been keeping their blogs since the early naughts (amazing!) and both have made friendships and launched careers because of them.
Personal newsletters have lately seemed to have taken the place of blogs, lately. At least one friend, Andre Natta, has started a great personal newsletter that I love to read, since he’s a genuinely smart guy and just a wonderful person in general. When I read it, I remember why I like to hang out with him so much. And various writers I admire send out somewhat-personal newsletters, like Ed Yong and Tyler Coats.
Other professionals I like in media and politics, like Kate Gardiner, Ann Friedman and Nancy Kohn also put out newsletters, but theirs bleeds into the professional, including links to people looking for work, promotion of projects they’re working on and in the case of Friedman, an opportunity to subscribe to a paid version of her newsletter that’s even more professional leaning.
I admire their forthrightness, but then, I’m trying to slow things down, rather than speed them up, right?
Video blogs, an incredible way to express intimacy have exploded in this space. Casey Neistat, the king of personal video bloggers, has been doing it for five years now, with 1.5 million views every other day while his friend `, who blogs from South Africa, gets about a quarter million views weekly. There are plenty of other examples in this space – but I think the pressure to come up with interesting content and then edit it down weekly or daily (!!) squeezes out the realness. Even Simone Giertz, whom I really think highly of for her incredible science empowerment of girls and total honesty in her videos, offers a link to an exclusive t-shirt in her most recent video announcing her brain tumor is back.
If you like me, click, subscribe, share, buy, join my Patreon. Then, maybe you’ll be enough.
Maybe.
I can’t guarantee that I’m not going to ask you to click, subscribe, share, buy or join my Patreon. But for now, I have a different idea. I’d like to send you a postcard.
I found a couple dozen European postcards from the 1960’s in my dad’s stuff and I also have some postcards of the Indiana Dunes my grandmother made in the 1960’s. So, I thought I’d send them to you. Email me your street address, and I’ll send you one with a note from me. Then, keep it, or write back! Whatever. We’re going to just share and communicate like humans do, when they can. It’ll be fun!
Thank you for reading. I really do appreciate it.