The Illusion of Insignificance: Why I Keep Blogging Despite Low Viewership

In 7 or 8 months of blogging, I don't think any single post I made got more than 4 or 5 total views. A handful got 3 views, and 2 views, but the normal view count for one of my posts was 1 or 0. 

Why do that? What motivates someone to constantly subject themselves to the quantified evidence of their insignificance? 

In fairness to myself and others, I do not share my blog posts on social media and I'm not making any effort to do so. Blowing up as a blogger isn't necessarily an aim of mine. 

I have more family members than my average blogpost view count. I share the link with them. I don't owe any of them money that I know of and I recently spent 6 weeks traveling the broad and wide United States to spend time with them. Unless they haven't told me something, the visit went pretty well with everyone. Me and my missus enjoyed ourselves and it seemed everyone else did, too. 

Despite how that might sound, I'm not trying to dog my fam out for not viewing every post I make. They have busy lives and I often write about stuff they might be interested in, but without a pasion for it similar to my own. Their lack of attention to what I write here isn't meant as any sleight to me. Thinking so would show a rather vile kind of self-important, center-of-the-world problem with one's worldview. 

The net is home to a lot of people around the world, and about 3 billion of them speak English like me. When we blog or vlog, our nets cover each part of that vastness. We are fishers of men, and the influence we gain from these efforts largely come from our hook: the attention-grabbing ability of our titles, our descriptions, the thumbnails or in-post graphics we can mix in with our offerings. Grab their attention as quickly as possible and hang on for dear life. 

From a business standpoint, I understand it. Strategizing and planning your engagements with others then creating as appealing a presentation as possible is the right way to do it in an attention-based economy, if you want to succeed at least. This approach is so ubiquitous that if you want authenticity, you're more likely to look for it among the people posting who've mastered catching your attention with a compelling title or photo. And then they sell you something. 

I have nothing to sell. Many things I reveal through my writing and vlogging are things most people don't want anyone else to know. I'm not sure how I'm serving my ego when I peel back the curtain to show what a glutton he's been for easy. I've got real struggles and a poor attitude. I don't want to go to the gym right now. I don't want to lift the freakin' weights or pedal the recumbent bicycle. Both sides of my back are biting this morning, and I'm not winning that battle with myself right now. 

Few videos out there of people making body transformations show them fighting the battle I'm fighting right now. You'll see them struggle for that next rep, their faces wincing with pain or the strain of the effort. You might even see them fail a repitition. But you don't see many of them fighting with themselves saying, "I don't want to go to the gym today. I'm sore. I'm tired. My body isn't changing as quickly as I want it to." 

I walked to the gym 2.2km away after a back spasm. It hurt the whole walk, as did my lower right leg. I walked back, too. To spite the pain, I increased my total walk distance by 30% over the last walk, and I walked faster. I punished myself to literally beat my body into submission. I inflicted literal pain on myself to show my flesh who's boss. 

I didn't talk like that though. I talked about my back and my leg hurting, but I wasn't honest about how much. I tried to hide it through silence and masking with my face. Even I bent to the maintenance of desired appearances. 

That makes sense, doesn't it? None of us want others to see our suffering. We don't want to show our weakness, cowardice or fear to anyone, even though we all feel them. We want to show our smiles, our happy lives, our successes and the hard work we put in to achieve them. 

We all work for the algorithm. We always have. It has evolved as we have until now, it tells businesses how to do business, churches how to attract more followers, what "sells," how much smaller our windows of opportunity are, and how quickly they pass by. 

Maybe that's why the interest in what I write and post is so small. Maybe I'm even less like others than I thought. Maybe even fewer people than I imagined consider humanity and our inherent struggles with a passion that mirrors my own. 

That's why I do this. All of this is terribly important to me. Important enough to be radically authentic with myself and anyone who dares read the words I scribble into the digital universe. It is possible that my opinions and perspectives are somewhat rare among our species. That makes putting them out there that much more important. Either way, I'm a part of this human experiment, too. Shouldn't I contribute and share that experience? Shouldn't I be honest about that experience?

If anything I write or film or share in some other way has a genuine impact on one person, who knows what fruit that may bear? I'm not thinking about fruit for me. I'm thinking about the spider-web effect of that impact, and how deeply it might weave itself into and continue to impact future realities. How much might I change by trying to ensure that happens? 

That's why. There. 

It's difficult to ponder your insignificance. It's another thing entirely to willingly put yourself into a daily meeting with the enumerated evidence of that insignificance. Perhaps I've simply stopped caring about mattering. Perhaps I'm truly happy and content with the small number of people to whom I do mattter. I think the likelihood is that the latter gives me the strength to deal with not mattering to many others. 

Thus the battles wage on. Perhaps that's what its all about. 

If you read this far, thank you very much. I really appreciate your time and attention. Please leave me a comment with your thoughts about this post. I'd love to engage in conversation with you, and would be most appreciative of constructive criticism. 

The Lord bless you and keep you, make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace.