What Happens When No One Reads Your Best Work?

Sometimes I wonder if the best writing has to come from a place of emotion. Could be anger, happiness, sadness or some sort of mix of angst.

And sometimes I wonder what happens if no one reads our best stuff. Does it really matter? I often say I write first for me and then for you but I notice when no one remarks on my work and so I wonder if I am lying to myself because that is the worst kind of lie.

Ask my children and they will tell you I know of no greater betrayal than lying to yourself. Since I am a thinker, a seeker and a spelunker of the mind I have to dig deeper inside my own head to figure out if I have committed this sin because there is none greater.

I Am Not Upset Now

Don’t know what vibe you are getting from these words but I am not sad now, mostly happy. Curious about this and so many other things.

A bit torqued about a question of whether white men have privilege, might blog about it because I think it is bullshit. It is a ridiculous argument that ignores a million factors such as whether people have access to education and money.

Won’t spend more time than that last sentence and a comment about the impact of class on privilege and then we’ll save the rest for a later day.

Back to the question of what happens when no one reads your best work. To be clear, I am not certain what posts I would include as being among my best work, but if I had to point out something recent I would say read An Empty Place At The Table. I am particularly proud of that one.

More Words

Stumbled onto This Was Our Song and liked a lot of what I read. Noticed it doesn’t have a picture, should add one because that would help.

Read the words in the blockquote below and smiled because there is so much in them that is meaningful to me.

“Don’t know whether to walk, no run the other direction as fast I can so that I can try to forget. But here is the deal, life is nothing but a series of moments in time set against the backdrop of the people who share them.

We did more than share a moment. We built an entire universe and lived a thousand lives inside our secret world. We loved and we lived. Man loves woman and girl loves boy.

I don’t have to ask your permission to love you and I don’t have to live in the past. I can pretend that once was is just a memory and I can move on past the moment. That is the beauty of choice and free will. But I can also admit, accept and acknowledge that something more is going on and I can follow the signs through the mist and blaze a trail through the fog.

I can see if that helps that which once was morph into that which is and that is what I intend to do. Life is short and our grip is tenuous. So I will do what I do best and dance in the fire and dare the flames to burn me. I will climb the hills and walk through the valleys because that was the promise I made to you and I will hold myself to it.

And I will do what is required so that I can determine whether the ghosts I see are the spirits of the future or the shades of the past. And in the midst of it all I will continue to hold out my hand so that you can take it. Because I never stopped being your hero and I never gave up.”

Why Is It Meaningful?

That excerpt comes from Fragments of Fiction but the message about never giving up, about recognizing that life is short and that all we are guaranteed is today is me.

It is what I teach my children and how I try to live my life.

This is important because when I am doing this spelunking of the mind I am working out whether it is important to be read and why because if I understand it better I can adjust what I am doing so that it is in sync with my larger goals.

Because when you sing a song alone or with another sometimes it just becomes better, stronger, longer and more powerful when you understand all the nuances.

And because I think the truth is there is a part of me, a little boy who lives inside that hopes somewhere among the readers is the agent/producer/magician who will read these words and offer me a gazillion dollars to just write.

Could quote Lennon and being a dreamer or I could just say this past year has proven that sometimes dreams come true and I am willing to keep fighting for more.