The Beauty of Doing Things that Don’t Matter#
When I recently decided to start blogging, I first told a group of close friends who are fellow entrepreneurs. Naturally, they asked a few questions:
1. Who’s your target audience?
2. What’s the primary theme or focus topic?
3. How often will you post new content?
4. What is your objective for the blog (i.e. promoting your company, building a following)?
5. Who’s going to do copyediting?
I thought for a few seconds and the answers came to me very strongly. And it felt good to respond with an approach that was unfamiliar to me.
There is no target audience. I do believe that other people could benefit in their own unique way from reading what I’ll write, and I would love it if that happens; but I’m doing this for me. That means I won’t attempt to tailor my content according to what I think a predefined segment of people would like to read about.
There is no primary topic. I’ll be posting the ideas on my mind that I believe are important enough to write out, pertinent to life in some way, and for which my perspective is unique and developed enough to share.
I’ll post new content whenever inspiration causes the above conditions to occur. In other words, no, there is no schedule.
And lastly, after sending my friends a draft of a post for copyediting, I decided:
There will be no copyediting, or proofreading. The authenticity of my thoughts will be 100% preserved. If you, the reader, find a typo that makes what I’m trying to say unclear, please post a comment and I will clarify it. I won’t be offended.
Reflecting later on this overall concept, I realized that something has been generally missing in my life — doing things just for the sake of the acts themselves, without any feeling that they need to be “successful” in some way.
As an entrepreneur, and a generally goal-oriented person, every project I can remember undertaking has been tied to some kind of objective… Helping people, making a living, mastering a skill, improving myself, etc.
It’s liberating to do something enjoyable in its own right, without being attached to the result. In starting this blog, I’ve become very aware of the idea that you can have an intention without having a goal.
If no one ever reads this blog other than me, I’d be totally fine with it. I’m enjoying writing it and I feel a sense of freedom from typing these words. Beyond that, I accept whatever may become of this.