First off let me say that I really don’t like blogging about blogging. It seems like a really cheap and easy way to get people to read your stuff, because obviously people who blog are interested in blogging so would like to read a blog about blogs. Yeah. And I also don’t like writing about “success” or “being successful” because I’m not successful so why should I be spouting shit about success when I know nothing about it? It’s like listening to financial advice from a poor person or dieting tips from someone who’s obese or anorexic. But here we are anyways. I guess what I’m trying to say is that on the path to success (which I think I’m on I guess) there’s about a million difficulties you run into and if that’s causing me so much frustration and anguish I might as well write about them. Other people are probably dealing with some of the same struggles and feelings. This is called Everything Sucks and being successful is probably the hardest thing ever, so it fits I suppose.
This post is about a blog and failure and how I suppose it’s nice to quit sometimes. This obviously don’t feel good which is why it Sucks. I started a blog in February that was about electric cars. I had purchased one about a year ago and since there are tons of misconceptions about the things I thought blogging would be a great way to enlighten the masses about how great they are. I really like my electric car because of a ton of reasons and I wanted to get that information out into the world.
I was enthusiastic about the blog; it had focus, a narrow topic, and seemingly tons of things to write about. I’ve said before Everything Sucks is a mess because it has no real “tight theme” which apparently blogs are supposed to have so I felt excited about finally have a good blog idea. You read articles about how to really blog and they usually suggested those few things. I set to work on it immediately. I made a post every two days, made sure the design looked acceptable, and even made a Facebook page for the blog. Hell, I even advertised for the blog! It took about a week for the page to have over 100 “likes” and I felt good. Things were moving along nicely.
And then I didn’t write as much for it. It wasn’t for lack of motivation either; I just couldn’t think about topics to write about. When it came down to it an electric car is nearly the same as a gas car and there’s only so much writing you can do about how efficient and cheap they are to operate. One of my premises — namely the one about having a ton to write about — was wrong apparently. There wasn’t much to write about.
You end up with two choices. You can either give up, accept failure, and move on or keep trying to make progress. It’s a choice we all make in regards to nearly anything: a difficult job, relationships, careers, and goals. This choice is made more difficult by the often-heard adage about success: it’s all due to persistence. The people who are successful don’t give up at the first sign of difficulty and if you give it you feel like shit. You’re a failure. You’re [insert goal here] is an automatic failure if you stop working on it.
What did I do? I gave up on it. Do I feel like shit? Sort of, just because it was wasted time. But strangely I don’t feel too bad about it. Even though we’re conditioned to feel like failures sometimes it’s best to realize when you don’t have a way forward and try something else. You can keep banging your head into a wall trying to make progress but sometimes that wall isn’t going to give and you need to move on. Accepting this is probably the hardest part.
I think of what Hunter S. Thompson said in a letter to his friend asking for advice:
“We set up a goal which demands of us certain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a concept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.”
He gives the perspective of a child who wants to be a firefighter when he grows up. Everyone wants to be something cool like that, either a firefighter or a veterinarian or an astronaut. None of us actually become these things but we don’t feel like we failed out dreams because we eventually outgrow them, or rather see the goals from a different angle, as Thompson puts it. It’s this ever-changing growth in ourselves and our ever-changing perspective on life that forces us to also make ever-changing choices regarding our goals and dreams. It’s simply not set in stone: you have to constantly figure out what it is you need to do.
I guess it’s with that perspective that I gave up on my blog. I had a good run for a few months and for once I hit it hard with tons of motivation and little procrastination: two of my biggest flaws. Eventually I found that there wasn’t much to write about and that maybe my idea wasn’t that good. I felt terrible about this at first because I had wasted so much time on the blog and I obviously felt like a failure for “giving up” but fact is fact. With my ever-changing perspective on the state and future of the blog I was able to realize that my time would be better spent elsewhere. I still learned a bunch of lessons and those won’t disappear either. So don’t feel like you’re a failure because you had to give something up. Obviously try to make progress because persistence does seem to be key, but realize when something has run its course and don’t be afraid to move on to new adventures (like trying to sell goddamn t-shirts)!
