For an Audience

sunset over a beach at low tide with people playing in the foreground, dinghies and watercraft in the shallows, and numerous sailboats in the background

Write for an Audience

This is common wisdom in the writing world, particularly when blogging. Who’s your audience? What do they want to hear? What will interest them?

And today, I find myself saying, “Fuck them. I’ll write for me.” I don’t care what you want. Perhaps that will make you stop reading right here, and if so, that’s fine. I don’t run metrics on this site, and I don’t care how many views I get.

So why write? Why publish something publicly that’s solely for me? Still with me? Cool…thank you.

along a street, two old telephone booths on the right, one with a grocery cart parked inside it with a palm tree to the left and under a brilliant blue sky with white fluffy clouds

Public Postings

It’s hard to describe my desire to put my thoughts out into the world. I’ve been doing it for a long time (hello, livejournal). Maybe it’s a bad habit that I developed as an angsty teen-to-twenty-something.

Random thoughts happen to me all the time, and they frequently assemble into a post-like format in my head. Sure, I could journal them, but then I’m the only one that reads them.

It’s not about trying to connect with an audience and get feedback. Otherwise, I would have comments turned on. And maybe it was for the Likes and the Comments. But now, it’s something else. I like creating something, putting it out into the universe, like a message in a bottle, and not knowing the impact it has. Not getting the dopamine hit of getting a bunch of views or going viral.

Wow - yeah. It’s about putting something out there into the world just for me without regard for reward. This is a huge part of my creative growth. I hesitate so often because a piece isn’t perfect or I need to find just the right photo or I need to run this through a grammar check.

photo of a sunset from the view of a cockpit with a large winch in the foreground with a line wrapped around it

Sucking my Will to Create

One thing I know for sure: when I sit down to write for an audience, whether it’s to demonstrate my photography skills or share some adventure on SV Loka, I have been shutting down. I can’t write. I get blocked and lose the will to live! heh

Maybe that’s an exxageration. But there is a visceral “sucking the creative juices” effect that occurs lately. Anyone who’s done anything creative probably knows this feeling.

So here I am. Writing for me. Whatever the fuck I want. No spell check. No grammer tools. No SEO. No metrics. Just random thoughts and a few photos. I encourage you to do the same at some point and see how it feels.

All photos are mine and are copyright. I maintain ownership and do not grant permission for use.