Writers Unbound

The standard formula for blogging success seems to be as follows:

1) Set up a blog
2) Start writing about something which inspires you to great passion
3) Be an extremely active participant in blog communities, networks, social pages, comment boxes, blogs with similar topics.
4) Be responsive and friendly to the people who read and comment on your blog
5) Keep going
6) Repeat ad infinitum

There’s nothing wrong with this advice, really. What I don’t like about it is the formulaic concept. The appeal of the internet (for me, anyway) is the vastness, wildness, uncharted territory-anything-can-happen feeling. The more I dive in, though, the more I feel like I’m about 10 years too late.

The internet leveled the playing field. We were all equal again, nameless and faceless and free from the social boxes we all wore once we stepped out of our own homes. The athletes could talk about technology, the geeks could discuss pop culture, and no one questioned. It was the holy grail of opportunity for all us introverted people. We might get nervous and fidgety and stutter in a crowd or at a party, but online, with our fingers flying on the keyboard, we could be witty and friendly and fun. We could be ourselves, and we found out that people liked us. Really liked us. Not because we were like them, either, or because we suddenly figured out how to fit in. It was a revelation: when we got comfortable enough to be genuine, other people liked our quirky taste and sarcastic humor and opinionated voices. They had just never seen it before.

And then (to continue a vast oversimplification) we really started blogging seriously. It was addicting. We talked about it. We blogged on each other’s blogs. We blogged about everything. It became our social life. Suddenly we were at the heart of the next big thing, first. Everybody started a blog. Traffic grew. Comments increased. It was a frenzy of clicking and linking and commenting and posting…

And things began to get civilized. We tracked numbers and plotted graphs and calculated averages and figured out advertising. We were blogging, and we were making money and we were more popular than that other guy who was also blogging. We had arrived. We had conquered. We had created an online world that mirrored the one we were so happy to escape: a world that defined success by money and popularity, with rules and formulas and systems for achieving that success. The West was won, and we turned it into the East.

So what’s next? Renegade blogging, an alternate internet, tracking popularity through text messaging? Something about us keeps seeking the newest frontier. That’s what we loved about the internet. That’s what I still look for when I flip up my screen. I have a more difficult time finding it. Some days I don’t mind. It’s easier to have structure. I can follow the formula someone else figured out. But it makes me feel dead when that’s all I do. The reason I don’t want a 9-to-5 office job is because I hate the idea of simply doing what someone else tells me to do.

I respect authority, I love a free market, I value organization, and I wish success to new ventures. I just don’t want to be chained to doing what someone has already figured out how to do. I want to figure things out myself. I want to make progress, not repeat processes. I want to invent and theorize, not just test the validity of what others have invented.

I know it’s a balance, and maybe I should just munch my part of the internet pasture and be content. I can’t even see the fence…

But I can’t forget about it. That’s why I’ll keep moving, keep looking, keep watching the horizon, keep searching for the next frontier.