I know I should be writing Step 2 of my outlining series, but I kind of got caught off guard by this topic today. And, it is something that I want to talk about. Primarily because I know I’m a victim of instant gratification. I can almost guarantee you, that you are too.
(I also wrote a bad poem titled: Victim of Instant Gratification)
In a world where messages are instant, don’t you want everything else to be too. In the age of the internet, people have lost the understanding of what it means to work for something. Open up a web browser and BAM! the whole world is at your fingertips. Any piece of information you want can be accessed almost instantly. There is no waiting involved. As evidence of this point, I just did a google search for “instant gratification”, the response from Google was: “About 13,900,000 results (0.41 seconds)”. Do you know how short an amount of time .41 seconds is. I’ll tell you. Its less than the amount of time it takes you to blink. My finger had barely left the ENTER key before the page with the search results populated. Now tell me, if that’s not instant gratification, what is?
This is a problem for the world though. Why? Because it has created a generation of the ultra entitled. Countless people, the world over, believe that they’re entitled to everything that exists, and they’re entitled to it right now, just because they’re alive. I know this first hand. Why? Because I was one of them. I’m trying though, I’m learning to be better than that.
Nothing in this world is instant and worth having. To truly understand the value of a thing you have to have worked for it. To enjoy the success of some venture, you must have invested something into it. You must put your body, mind, heart, and soul into the process to acquire the McGuffin. Why? Because the world requires balance. You can’t have the good without the bad. And you have to have experienced the bad, the worst in fact, to understand the beauty of what it is you’ve accomplished.
Let’s take blogging as a short example. I’ve tried blogging on and off for the last ten years or so. Most often I’ll get about a month into it and give up. Why? It’s the instant gratification factor involved.
Building a successful blog takes time. It takes time to build an audience. It takes time to understand the different factors that are going to help your blog grow. You have to learn certain techniques to truly get things moving, and it takes time to learn those things. Search Engine Optimization (SEO for short) is not a skill that develops overnight. There are plenty of other factors as well. What type of content are you producing? How many people are interested in said content? Is it quality content? Do you know what you’re talking about? If you don’t know what you’re talking about, are you at least doing a good job of explaining the way you’re going about learning about this topic? And, this list could probably go on for hours.
Now, here I come expecting everything to be handed too me on a satin pillow, and, much to my surprise, I’ve had little to no traffic in the time a month has gone by. I feel like I’ve worked my heart and soul out, bleeding all over the keyboard as I’m doing it, and I’ve got nothing in return. So, at that point I would give up. I would never look past that, and not even try to understand what was happening. I wouldn’t look into learning how to do other things to help drive traffic, or improve the quality of my content, or really understand anything about how to build a blog. I just expected it to be super easy for me because I’m “ME” (and, yes, at the time I would think about myself in all caps). I’m trying to learn the difference this time.
I’m about four or five days into this attempt at blogging, and this time I’m determined to be successful. I’m not going to let the lack of instant gratification get to me, rather I’m going to understand that nothing comes without hard work and determination. Dedication and discipline are a requirement in this field. I’m also going to look at studying marketing and SEO and a hundred other things that are related to building a blog. I want to make a living as a writer, so I need to build an audience. A blog is one of the best ways to do that. Now, I just need to learn to be patient enough to put in the time and effort required to build it.
Come to think of it now, I might actually try to do something somewhat entertaining. (At least the thought of it to me is entertaining.) I believe I’ll track the progress of my blog both here on WordPress and on Medium (and maybe Blogger if I decide to revive that blog, though I’m basically just posting the same content on all of them.) Tracking the progress of the blog will go a long way towards helping me build the blog and understand how this unique online world works.
Anywho, I feel like I’m rambling, and have totally lost the thread of thought that was the impetus to this post. I’ve also got about a hundred other things I need to do on my day off. So, I’ll be signing off here. Have a good one.
Ryan S. Kinsgrove
Check out my premium Medium post- Multiplicity: It’s All In Your Head
