“You never read my poems.” complained my sister-in-law.

She published her poems on Facebook and hated social media.

I had opened an account on Facebook eight years ago, during a trip to Vietnam, posted some travel photos from a couple of trips, and then forgot all about it.

Then last year, I did a cartooning course. The main requirement of the course was to post a sketch every day on Facebook.

No way! I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself on Facebook, where half of my family and most of my friends were always active.

So I opened an account on Instagram and started posting my sketches there.

The encouragement I got from a small number of people who started following me blew my mind. 

I was addicted.

To social media.

But not in the way you might think.

I got addicted to social media because of three things.

1. Learning in public
2. Becoming a part of a scenius
3. Self-promoting without self-promoting

Learning in public.

Social media opened for me a new way of operating. Almost all the people I learn and get inspiration from share their work and processes on social media. They are not running courses or doing seminars. They are too busy for that. Instead, they are sharing directly from their studios or home, where they are toiling away. Rather than being secretive about their work, they consistently post their work even if it is incomplete, faulty, and far from perfect. They are learning online, in public.

I discovered the best way to learn anything is to commit to learning in front of others. Figure out what you want to learn, follow people who are sharing their work, learn from them and share as you go, doesn’t matter how bad it is.

At this point, don’t worry about how you’ll make money or a career off it.

Be on the lookout for voices that you can fill with your efforts. With time you will find out your uniqueness.

On the spectrum of creative work, the difference between mediocre and good is vast. However, mediocrity is still in the range. You can still move from mediocre to good in increments. The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something. Amateurs know that contributing something is better than contributing nothing. — Austin Kleon

Becoming a part of a scenius.

A musician, record producer, and visual artist Brian Eno, introduced a new model for learning and contributing. He called it “scenius.”

Under this model, great ideas are often given birth by a group of creative individuals — artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers — who make up an “ecology of talent.”

If we look closely, many people we think of as genius were part of “a whole scene of people who were looking at each other’s work, supporting each other, copying from each other, sharing and contributing ideas to each other.

Scenius acknowledge that good work isn’t created in a vacuum and that creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration. A result of a mind connected to other minds.

Internet is basically a bunch of “sceniuses” connected together. Blogs, social media, discussion boards, forums, newsletters — are all the same thing; virtual scenes where people hand out and talk about the things they care about.

There is no bouncer, no gatekeeper, and no barrier to entering these scenes.

Medium is a scenius. Writers get together here, learning from each other, collaborating, growing, and enhancing the ideas. Within Medium, there are many scenius — separated by categories, interests, subjects.

You don’t have to be talented to be part of a scenius. You don’t have to have any particular qualifications or be a master of specific skills to be part of these scenes. You need to be willing to learn and contribute. Online, everyone — the artist, the expert, the amateur, the master, and the apprentice — contributes.

Self-promoting without self-promoting.

I hate self-promotion. I am a subscriber to Comedian Steve Marin’s philosophy, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” 

I just want to focus on getting better and believe people who like my work will find me. Just like Austin Kleon says, “You don’t really find an audience for your work; they will find you. You just need to be findable.”

By sharing my work on social media I am making sure I am findable. I attract people who are interested in what I do. Not only my work but my ups and downs, failures and successes, hopes and aspirations all make me a person very much like my readers. As they get to know me better, they get invested in my success. That is better promotion than any PR company can do for me.

I had no idea something as simple as posting an amateurish sketch a day could connect me to my readers. So many people wrote to me saying they look forward to my sketches. Others root me for the improvements. They even give me suggestions for what I should sketch next time. My self-esteem had a real boost when one follower asked me to design the cover of his novel.

To sum up.

Now you know why I am addicted. 

Social media has made the world smaller. It has made it possible to connect with people who share your interests and form “scenius.”

Rather than learning in isolation, learn in public. Forget about being an expert or a professional. Wear your amateurism with pride and share what you love. and people who love the same thing will find you.

Last month I announced my first course and launched it on social media (if you can call sending out one post on social media a launch).

I have been blogging for two and half years now, have a decent number of followers on Medium, Substack, and LinkedIn; I should write and sell courses and make money by now. That’s what I was thinking.

That thinking came from all the stuff I am reading from the Internet gurus. Almost everyone writing on the big platform seems to teach that you should establish yourself on a platform, build an email list, and start selling courses.

But what if you don’t want to. What if making money online is not your objective. It wasn’t mine when I started blogging two and a half years ago. Then I got sucked in by all the free advice available on the internet.

Until about last week, when I sat down to figure out why I felt uncomfortable with running the course due next week.

That is when I wrote down the reason I started writing in the first place. Here they are:

1. To get better at expressing myself.
2. To share my insights.
3. To overcome my fear of publishing. 
4. To tell my story.
5. To leave a legacy.

It was not my intention to launch another career. Rather I want to devote my remaining life learning to write better, making friends with like-minded people, and have something to feel excited about.

Online writing is providing me all that. Then why am I getting into the rat race of running courses? 

Enough people are doing that, and some of them are much more experienced than me. 

I need to keep doing what I am doing and enjoy the journey. I have nothing to prove, either to myself or to anybody else.

As soon as I realized that, a ton of weight lifted from my chest.

It is not the first time I have chosen the wrong path. 

And it is not the last. 

What is important at times like these is to watch out for cues. 

I have a quote that sits on my pinboard to guide me whenever I feel uncomfortable with a decision. 

I must have decided wrongly because I am not at peace, I made the decision myself but I can also decide otherwise because I want to feel at peace. I do not feel guilty because the Universe will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let it. I chose to tell it and allow it to decide for me. — Anonymous

Following the Path of Least Resistance

I have discovered that we have always pushing ourselves to do more.

We think it must be the right thing because everybody is doing it. Keeping with the Johns has become our way of life whether we need it or not. 

What I am finding is, if we leave the things to follow their natural course, we will reach the right decision in due time.

This is something that Robert Fritz tried to describe in his 1984 book The Path Of Least Resistance.

You are like a river. You go through life taking the path of least resistance. We all do — all human beings and all of nature. It is important to know that. You may try to change the direction of your own flow in certain areas of your life — your eating habits, the way you work, the way you relate to others, the way you treat yourself, the attitudes you have about life. And you may even succeed for a time. But eventually, you will find you return to your original behavior and attitudes. This is because your life is determined, insofar as it is a law of nature for you to take the path of least resistance. — Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance.

That is true for all of us. 

Although self-improvement literature has been telling us, “The path of least resistance is the path of the losers” (H. G. Wells) and “The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men,” (Henry David Thoreau), it is the path of nature. 

Besides, who wants the rivers to run straight anyway.

I have spared myself a lot of grief by following my nature and have opened myself to a lot more possibilities. 

“If you limit your choice only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.” ― Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance.

I might run courses one day. I might do online webinars, seminars, and summits one day. But at the moment, they are not the right thing for me to devote my energy to. 

That decision gives me peace.

If you, too, are not at peace with anything in your life right now, use your right to change that decision and let the universe make it right for you. Follow the path of least resistance and trust it will lead you to the right decision.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

I read four articles this week that touched on the theme of vulnerability. I want to summarise them here and the lesson learned from them.

The first one was, This Tip Will Revolutionize Your Online Writing, by Vishnu*s Virtues, who wrote if your articles are not connecting with your audience, they are missing one important ingredient — your personal experiences.

Vishnu discovered, quite accidentally, that when he started talking about his most difficult and painful life experiences (including a breakup that eventually led to divorce), he started getting more engagement from readers.

His message is that if you are not comfortable sharing your life, your writing won’t stand out.

Your unique life story and personal experiences are the differentiators when it comes to writing online. — Vishnu’s Virtues

Talking about difficult things can not only be therapeutic but also helps other people on the same journey.

But exposing yourself online is not an easy thing to do. We don’t know who will be reading our work and how they will use the information. Will we be judged?

Many writers on Medium go deep into their personal lives, talking about their difficult upbringing, dysfunctional families, relationships, and mental health challenges. But all of us can’t do it.

Yet, if we want to write, we will have to learn to intertwine our stories with our writing.

How can we do that?

How can we be vulnerable in front of complete strangers?

The answer came in the next article. Allie Volpe explained vulnerability in The Next Time Someone Asks How You Are, Be A Little Vulnerable.

She referred to social researcher and writer Brene Brown’s work on studying connections, where she found that in order to bond, we must allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

Vulnerability can range from asking for what you really need in a relationship, being in a position where you could be rejected or criticized professionally or personally, or exposing yourself emotionally.

Being vulnerable is hard. Brown found that people often shift to numbness, blame, and perfection in order to shelve those feelings of discomfort. We put up a tough exterior.

But studies show we actually perceive acts of vulnerability — such as admitting a mistake or revealing romantic feelings — as strength in others but weakness within ourselves.

We typically don’t confide our deepest thoughts with those closest to us.

Allie refers to Harvard professor Mario Luis Small’s research. He found that people regularly disclose to those they don’t feel emotionally attached to, such as doctors or co-workers, mostly because they’re experts in a particular area or are physically there when something important comes up.

If have no problem being vulnerable to strangers then why can’t we open up to those we are close to.

Tom Kuegler shed light on that in his article — Afraid Friends Will Read Your Writing? Here’s Why That’s Ridiculous.

The biggest fear we have is that if we expose ourselves (or our friends and family) in our writing, they might read it and not like what they read.

Tom’s argument is that 99.99% of the time our family will not read what we write.

Why?

Because we are not the center of their universe. Nobody from our personal life cares about what we type into our laptop late at night and post on Medium the next day.

People can barely keep their own lives straight. They don’t have time to sit down and read whenever we publish something new.

If they do, and don’t like what they read Tom has just the quote for them:

“If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better.” — Anne Lamott

Then I read the article that showed how to be vulnerable in your writing.

Donnette Anglin wrote a story, Never Be Afraid to Re-introduce Yourself, which probably would have taken all the courage she had to put herself out there. Yet she did it gracefully and tenderly.

Not only did she put herself out there and shared her darkest secret, but the valuable lesson it taught her. Her story could be a true inspiration for many. That’s what sharing your vulnerability does. It makes you a hero and helps others to learn from your experiences.

Photo by Ava Sol on Unsplash