The Cost of Our Desires and Aspirations
July 2, 2020
Stages of Life
August 18, 2020
Everything we do, we do for a reason. Sometimes its a reason we share, sometimes its a reason we don’t share, and sometimes we don’t even realize the reason fully ourselves.
Take this blog, I want a way to share information I learn, and for what I learn to have a little more purpose than just being something I know. So by sharing the information in a public space I feel it can be more beneficial than just something I know. So the primary purpose of this blog is a notebook for me with the added advantage of possibly being useful for other people too.
There is a slight problem though, I measure it’s usefulness by people subscribing to the newsletter, or by getting a lot of views, when this is not happening it feels like I am not accomplishing anything through it, and this is when the desire to learn and document information has to take over from the desire to share information with people. If I let the disappointment of people not subscribing and not getting a lot of traffic dominate my actions, I would stop writing articles as the results have not been enough to keep me motivated.
Since the primary purpose of this blog is not for interactions and mainly an outlet, I can more easily get over a lack of interest from people, although sometimes it does still feel like its lacking because it is only half fulfilling my desire for it.
When the main reason is interaction and attention this can be more of a problem, and especially when it is a project that needs constant work.
I enjoy starting new projects, but they don’t all get the response I expect or would like. The newest of these is Zim Internet Review, an e-magazine (PDF Magazine) aimed at the online side of Zimbabwe.
The idea is to find information online about Zimbabwean businesses and other information like YouTube channels and anything else, then putting it all together into a PDF and offering it for free to interested readers.
It’s two weeks after the launch and I haven’t had a single submission from anyone, I haven’t received any feedback and only had a few people like the Facebook page and a couple sign up to the newsletter. A disheartening response for what I felt would be interesting to a lot of people.
I included in the first issue a list of all the water delivery companies in Zimbabwe that I could find information on and thought this would be a big interest generator as water is such a problem in the country, but overall it does not seem to have generated much interest at all.
It has only been about 2 weeks since I launched it, so it still has potential, but it takes time to research the information and effort to put it together, so to stay motivated when it does not just take off is difficult.
I think this is also compounded since I have not setup defined goals on what I what to accomplish and how I can accomplish it, so it comes back to my lack of planning which is hard to admit.
I am not alone in this problem of not getting the desired attention either, I come across many social media pages and websites that have suffered the same and are now pretty much dead sites. Another one of my examples is MegaDirectory, my idea was to create a website listing all the local businesses and I would put together category specific publications, so if you wanted for example, garden plants and accessories, you could view or download that specific PDF and it would have a full write-up on each company in the category as well as a list of them.
I thought this would be extremely useful, and I started with garden nurseries. The first problem was getting the businesses to be interested, most of them did not respond, some did but didn’t provide much information and only a couple actually provided the requested information on the company.
I persevered and out of over 100 businesses, I managed to get 7 companies to provide enough information about their company to be listed. Even some of those had very little information and not enough to take up the 2 pages I had allocated to each company.
Those are obvious reasons, and its easy to see if you are getting the desired results. Sometimes though our reasons are not so obvious and it is not so easy to realize if they are being fulfilled.
For example when you cook a meal for someone, it is not always just because people need to eat, sometimes you want recognition for the effort you’ve put in, you want to feel appreciated or be praised for you accomplishment and when it doesn’t come in the degree you wanted, you feel inadequate or not appreciated.
The important consideration we need when we start doing something is to know what response we want, and how we are going to get it. Ideally we will not base everything we do on the response we get from other people because it will result in many let downs and a feeling of inadequacy.
With Zim Internet Review, I started it because I wanted to research businesses in Zimbabwe and I wanted the information to be more useful than just me knowing, so I created a PDF magazine. Not only am I getting to research the information, but I am also learning all about putting together a PDF magazine. I am benefiting personally more than just learning about the local businesses, and just maybe there is at least another person who benefits from the final product too.
With MegaDirectory, it relied on interaction with businesses and I found that I was fighting an uphill battle with the businesses to get them to provide information, and then I was looking at constantly trying to advertise it to generate interest with viewers. Since I was not wanting to turn it into a full time business, it was taking too much time with limited results to maintain my interest. So it has joined the shelf of dust gathering projects until I can figure out a purpose for it.
It’s not always easy to remove other people from your expectations, I don’t think if you took the worlds top athletes and removed the recognition they get, that they would still perform to the same level that they do. It would probably be the same with most people who are famous for what they do. Without the chance of recognition by others, most people would probably not work so hard on the things they do.
If you can limit the need for external recognition and participation in the things you do, and rely more on personal fulfillment, chances are you will be happier and be able to accomplish more.
This is going to be my personal goal, trying to do the things I do for personal fulfillment rather than for recognition or needing appreciation from others.
