048: It’s Been A While
So, it's been a while. Call it writer's block, call it procrastination, call it focusing on other things. I've thought of it as all those things over that past 3 months. The reality is though, it was none of these. I thought back to why The Ascender started. At the time Traverse was still a very young business (and in many ways it still is), we were looking to connect with more people, more artists, and this was a way for us to do that. I was also writing more - or trying to write more - and The Ascender gave me the opportunity and the motivation to do that. I enjoyed sharing many of the ideas I had and putting some of my thoughts into words. But somewhere along the way it shifted from wanting to do this to needing to do it, and I don't think that's a great place to be coming from.
Because let's be honest, the world doesn't need another blog post. Worldwide there are 7.5 million new blog posts a day. WordPress alone publishes around 70 million every month. With the average length being 1,269 words, that's a lot of 'content'.
The world doesn't need another social media post. 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram per day. If you looked at each post for 1 second, it would take you 3 years to look at all of them.
The world doesn't need another video, there are 500 hours of videos uploaded to Youtube every minute. EVERY MINUTE. That's 720,000 hours of content per day. It would take an individual 82 years watching non stop to watch all of the content from one day of uploads. 82 YEARS...I quadruple checked that as I couldn't believe it.
The world doesn't need another song. There are 60,000 songs uploaded to Spotify everyday. It would take you 145 days listening non stop to get through all of those songs. And in those 145 days, 8.7 million more would have been uploaded.
Prior to this edition, I've sent out 47 Ascenders. In the beginning I was able to answer the question 'What is this for?'. But somewhere along the way I lost that. They became about fulfilling an external need as opposed to an internal desire. That's a place I'm sure many artists can relate to.
I enjoyed getting feedback from people who had connected with one of these. Every now and then someone would say that I must have read their mind and that the topic or problem I was talking about was exactly what they were dealing with. 'How did I know?'. Here's the dirty secret - it's because it was a problem I was dealing with and writing was my way to work through that problem. I'm no expert on any of this stuff, I'm struggling through it just like everyone else. But if I've learned anything in life it's that great things can come through struggle.
I'm hoping this helps kick my 'writers block'. I know the world doesn't need another email, another blog post, another essay or whatever these things are. In some sense though I want to write them, and I figure that's enough of a reason to at least keep going. But writing them and sharing them are a different thing - and as I've said, the world doesn't need more content for content sake.
So that's left me to answer the question we often ask artists we work with. Why is this project important to you? Why should someone take notice? It's an easy question to ask of others - a much harder one to answer for yourself. It is one that deserves an answer though - which leaves me with some homework to do!
In the end this is all a process. It is easy for any of us to get caught up in the 'end goal' - the finished product - and loose sight of that fact that the truly important part is in the doing. The value is in the creating, not the creation.
~ Steve