Luck, Loneliness, and a Following
So I’ve been told frequently, as of late, that you don’t exist. That you lack the time or attention span or desire to invest your attention towards any of the work I might produce or have to offer. That in order to garner any kind of audience at all, I must employ the use of mass-marketing techniques to even hope to find you, to position myself and my work before your discerning eyes, which means tailoring my work to fit and appeal to the standards and presumed attention span of people who are not like you, who are not the audience I desire to possess, to cultivate, to establish.
Apparently you’re not out there and there’s nothing I can do to find you, to make only precisely that which might get your attention, might draw you to me and my endeavors. And you’re the only person that I want, the only sort of people that I hope to have as a following or an audience. And I know you’re out there. There are other people out there doing things similar to that which I would like to do and they’ve grown a following, established a platform providing complex and intricate and in-depth content. You exist, somewhere out there in the wide world, you’re more than willing to join me on this journey, the only problem is I don’t know how to reach you, how to get my stuff in front of your eyes such that you know that I am here.
And maybe it’s because I haven’t really established what it is I seek to offer. Maybe it’s not quite a concrete product. I want to offer an opportunity to embark upon a journey of self-discovery and self-expression. I don’t want to just write novels and publish short stories and be around just for those who want to read fiction. I want to offer more than that. I want to offer a look behind the scenes at how we might tell a story, how we might express ourselves. I want people to follow along as I seek to create content. I want to encourage people to do the very same, to push themselves right along with me, such that we might all become better writers and better artists, that we might all push ourselves towards fulfilling whatever dreams we might have for ourselves.
It’s what I have a passion for. It is of more value to me to help you get what you want than it is for me to just lock myself in a room and write all on my lonesome. I once entertained the notion that to tell a story is much like the making of a puzzle or building of a car. That product is meaningless if there are none to drive that car or assemble that puzzle. I need you and your attention and your discretion for my work to have any value, to serve its function. Without you, everything that I might do, everything for which I might strive is meaningless, because then my work is just out there, sitting still and being stagnant and gathering dust and there’s no one to take it appear and scrutinize it. I want to encourage people to not only consume content but to dissect it, study its assemblage and reverse-engineer it in order to tell their own stories, make their own art, express them selves.
And my work is out there! I’ve published my projects and made them available to the public for free, but no one is interested. No one has the time, no one is interested in reading. It’s not like I haven’t invested my time in creating things, but it’s simply not true that “they will come” if only you “build it”. It has to be seen, and no one can tell me what I must do to get my stuff to be seen by the very people who might see in my work any value. All anyone can tell me is that I need to cater to other people, people who don’t want what I want, who don’t care to join me on this journey, who won’t offer for me the opportunities for which I strive and endeavor to accomplish. The general audience doesn’t care about me, my work or what I want. They’re not like me, and I don’t know how to make whatever it is they might be interested in.
All I know is what I like, what draws my interest, what pushes me and motivates me and drives me forward. And I can’t be the only person in the world sharing in just such things. You’ve got to be out there, somewhere. You just have to be. It’s far less likely that I am just this lone wolf out there in the wide world with none who share in my passion and tastes. You’ve got to be out there, too, and every bit as lonely as me. You’ve got to be looking for the very same stuff which drives me. And that’s the stuff I know how to make: what drives me. And if it works for me than it’s got to work for you, and the only obstacle between us the positioning of my material such that you might find it.
I don’t know if you’re an artist or a writer or a casual observer, and I don’t know if your endeavors are full-time or more of a hobby. I don’t know if you watch the same YouTube videos as I do or if you’re on Instagram or Tumblr. I don’t know how to find you and I don’t know where to put my stuff such that you find me. But you’re real and I know you are. And if I’m lucky, you’re hear now, reading this. And likely still wondering if this has been worth your time.
I don’t know how to convince you to stick with me, other than to say that I feel very alone, right now. That no one is ever going to give a shit about me and what I’m doing and that I’ll never gain just the sort of following that I’ve seen other artists get. It seems like I’m burdened with only just the sort of luck that I’ll never have what other people manage to get, that you’ll never find your place, here, and that you’ll never care for this petition of your time.
All I want is an opportunity. I’ve seen this work for other people and I just can’t figure out why this shouldn’t work for me, too, why I wouldn’t deserve just the opportunity to engineer some new thing. Why not me? Is that presumptuous, to think that I might be able to offer you something in return for your time? That I might be able to help you get what you want, whatever it is it might be? To answer in the negative just seems unfair, to me–I know I’m not owed a single thing, but at the same time, it just seems like everything that I want to do is engineered expressly and explicitly to serve as a hindrance to what I want and what I strive for. Why shouldn’t I find a following making podcasts? Why shouldn’t I be able to grow an audience? People are doing this all the time and finding an audience–what am I doing “wrong”, why is it not working for me?
I can’t help but ask these questions because it feels like I’m doing everything that I can just for this lone opportunity to engage with you. And nothing works. Nobody cares. And sometimes it almost seems like it’s personal, like I’m wearing some scarlet letter that says “Don’t follow this guy”. But if you’re willing, I can promise that I will do whatever I can to help you get whatever it is you want out of life. It’s the only offer that I can make, and I believe in that, I’ve seen it work for other artists, so why shouldn’t it work in this one instant? Is it a writing thing? Do people just not care about writers anymore?
I don’t know what else to do or where else to be, so here I’ll stay. I promise that I will maintain a presence in this space and will continue to write for you, to appeal to you. And whenever you’re ready, whenever you’re willing to join me on this journey, you’ll know precisely where to find me. Otherwise, this is it. This is all I know to do. Everyone else wants to tell me that you don’t exist. But I just can’t believe that, can’t buy into that. You’ve got to be out there, somewhere, there’s got to be a way that I can connect with you. And that’s all I want: the opportunity.
