Pieces of the Puzzle

Yesterday’s post was the second I’ve deleted out of something like 450. Statistically speaking, I think 2 out of 450 is well within any reasonable margin of error, so I figure I can still claim a perfect batting average, though lord knows there’s gotta be at least another few dozen posts that should be deleted. I’m just too lazy to go and ferret ‘em out.

Usually when I write something here, I pretty much walk away from it. I might read it over once more, fix a typo or two, or maybe change out a word, but that doesn’t happen very often. But yesterday for some reason I kept going back, and I never could figure out how to say what I really wanted to say, maybe because I’m not sure what I wanted to say. Plus, one of the comments made me realize that some folks might be getting false impression of our neighbors, who are some of the most honest, hard-working, generous, and downright decent people we’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. So there was that. And truthfully, the whole thing seemed a little whiny. And as Penny would surely tell you, I know from whiny.

I wish I coulda left the comments, though. There were some real good ones, including the one where someone (can’t remember, could probably go look, but ain’t gonna) asked what I get out of writing in this space. Damn. Hit the mark, there, because I’ve definitely been thinking about that a bunch lately.

In the past two months, my readership has doubled. Same with page views. I suspect it’ll taper off a bit – a bunch of that came from book-related media hits, but still. Big change, real fast. In every sense, it shouldn’t matter. But I also can’t quite shake the sensation of increased exposure and wonder about the impact of that on our lives. This is something we think about a lot – the potential toll of sharing our experiences and the balance between that toll and the rewards. Someone accused me recently of commoditizing my family, and I had to laugh, because generally speaking, I think commoditizing something means you actually earn money on the deal, does it not? If I wanted to commoditize my family, I would’ve said “yes” to the 60 Minutes producer. Or the producer from the BBC. Or maybe the one from National Geographic Television. Or maybe the one who emailed me yesterday; not sure where she’s from, but whatever. It’s gonna be “no.” By-the-by, if any other television producers are reading this, my answer is “no.”

So what do I get out of it? Not money, obviously, or at least not a meaningful amount in the grand scheme of things. Certainly, I get discipline: If there are 450 posts on here, and they average 500 words each, that’s (hang on a minute, this is going to take me a while)… 225,000 words that I wouldn’t have written otherwise. Now, whether or not those words maybe shoulda stayed unwritten is a topic for another day, but you can’t deny the fundamental truth of the fact that if you want to become a better writer, you better write.

What else? Well, I get something out of many of the conversations that crop up in the comments section, that’s for sure. I get something out of taking 30 minutes or sometimes even a bit more to try and articulate whatever it is that’s been bouncing around my too-hollow head. Most days, I don’t even know what that is until I sit down and say it. I get something out of some of the connections I’ve made, some of the lives I’ve learned about. Most recently, Andrea’s. Certainly I get something whenever someone sends me an email that something they’ve read here has made a difference in their life. That’s pretty cool, though part of me wonders if it’s merely some form of self-aggrandizement that makes it so.

But there is a toll. For instance, people want to visit, and I’ve gotta figure out a nice way to say “no,” or a way to say “yes” and not feel put out. Not infrequently, people email with pretty big questions, questions that would literally take hours to answer in full. Or even in part. I thought maybe the consulting thing was a good way to handle that, but after a small flurry of inquiries and a few consults, that’s sort dried up and folks have gone back to simple emailing out of the blue. One person said she wanted to “suck all the experience out of my head” and wondered how we might arrange such a thing. I sent her a nice note with a link to the consulting page, but never heard back. Probably for the best, because I suspect that would’ve hurt like the dickens.

Good, bad; life, death; risk, reward; happy, sad: It’s never just going to be one or the other, and if it is, would you really want it? People say “I just want my kids to be happy,” or some version of that. Not me. I don’t just want my kids to be happy. I don’t just want to be happy myself, because there’s a whole range of meaningful experience outside the boundary of happy. Happy’s great, don’t get me wrong. But it’s just a piece of the puzzle.

So it goes with this space, I guess. There are rewards and there is a price to pay for those rewards. In all candor, I actually would like to figure out a way to make money be one of those rewards. Hell, if I had a nickel for every page view, we’d be set. If everyone who subscribed sent me $3 per month, we’d be in tall cotton. I’m not saying I expect that – not even close – I’m just saying it doesn’t seem that outrageous to me, because the truth is, we all do need something to sell. We can sell the sweat on our brow, the ticking minutes and hours of our life. We can sell things that don’t even exist – convoluted financial instruments and other items of conjured value. We can sell guns or chainsaws or pot or firewood or the flesh of the animals under our care. Hell, I’ve sold all but one of those things myself.

Some days, it feels to me as if this space is on borrowed time, as if the toll is outstripping the rewards, and there’s only so long I can abide by that. And then I feel stupid and naive for letting it be that way. Other times, I think the rewards are outstripping the toll, and I feel smart and savvy for having figured out how to make a living – a meager one, to be sure, but still: A living – doing what I love to do, and I see how this space contributes in ways that can’t be measured in dollars and cents.

There you have it: stupid, smart; naive, savvy. Just pieces of the puzzle.