I started writing my blog almost exactly seven months ago now –– my first post is dated the 16th of April, 2020. Despite taking the action of putting it online in this way, there lingered a brooding sense of insecurity which has prevented me from sharing it more liberally beyond a score of close friends. I have spent days and probably weeks inquiring into this line of thinking, in fact, not too long after I had started writing daily, I wrote what I often referred to as my manifesto of sorts on why people should be biased towards sharing their work online. I thought to myself that that was what I needed to get over the hump, but alas, my biased towards keeping my writing ensconced within the little circle I had shared it with.
In the last few days, however, I have begun to feel very differently. I am so much more energised to be more deliberate in how I share what I am thinking about. On reflection, I think that there are two major contributiors to this: getting over the hump of posting my first video on YouTube and the idea of the serendipity stack (or matrix, I haven’t decided the best name for it) revealing itself to me.
For me, YouTube always presented as my Ego’s most fearsome foe. In spite of all that I had read around why starting a channel is not only acceptable, but valuable in this day and age, I could never get over the hump of posting a video. My monkey brain still held onto notions that starting a YouTube channel is self-indulgent, and those that do have a superiority complex. I don’t know what exactly pushed me over the edge, whether it was consolation and encouragement from friends or perhaps the idea was simmering for long enough that it came to the boil, now I am grateful to be out on the other side. My insecurity and anxiety around starting a channel, funnily enough, vanished as soon as I hit published. No one had seen it, but for some weird reason, that was all it took for me to be comfortable with posting liberally. I want to get into the rhythm of making videos, and so that has become a point-of-emphasis for me for the next month. I know that the quality may not be there, but the only way to improve is to practice, so that is what I intend to do.
The serendipity stack is a nascent framework of my own creation which promises explain why sharing our work online provides value the sharer and the kind consumers of the work on an intellectual, social, and financial perspective. I realised early on that the largest barrier for me in sharing ideas online, in whatever form that may be, is the percieved lack of value exchange. If I share something on Twitter, it often felt like I was screaming to the void and that I was clogging up my follower’s feeds. This serendipity stack, which I will feature in future, has given me the language and the clarity for what exactly it is I want to do. It has emboldened me to (finally) share my work, and I am oh so grateful.
This journey from when I first published my first blog post to now being emboldened to share my work is 7 months-short. While it would have been nice to feel comfortable enough to share from the beginning, I know that I probably needed that time to reach that point on my own. If I can conquer my ego, I know that you can too, however long it may take, it is a struggle worth seeing out. I feel infinitely lighter now.