The Pressure To Get Online Writing Right is Kinda Insane
A note to my readers. Medium is a sharks tank. The pressure to get the right headline and format properly and speak to an emerging niche of online readers amongst thousands of competing writers is unique in the history of the written word. It seems, by all measures, that quanity of output is indispensable before establishing a meaningful following. It means you have to write a lot. 100 articles is the going number before you can even begin to gain a decent following of loyal readers. While I think I have a lot of clever ideas, and my soul knows deep down that writing is a big part of my path, the perfectionist in me wants everything to be ‘just right’ before I even begin.
And so, this is a mediocre post, and there will be more to follow, but sprinkled in between will be long thoughtout- genius insights from the core of my life and countless hours of meditation and travel and reading, distilled through the layers of introspection and patient pondering to deliver you with priceless gems that will surely alter your perception of yourself and the world.
In the meantime, I’m learning to play the game. With the modern attention-span gandered to be about the length of a goldfish sentences are becoming shorter. We have to catch your mind. Grab your attention. As quick as possible. Sending a flyign hook in your cortex to keep you engaged. And then, gently, ever so softly and cunningly, pull you in. Tug at your gums and convince you that these words your reading have something real behind them.
BIG WORDS AND BOLD HEADLINES ARE THE CURRENCY OF SHORT ATTENTION
If I can grab you, and lure you into the expereince of making your life better, then, in some way, you’ll latch on to these words and keep reading. Even though, at the end of the day, I’ll end up saying the same thing, more often than not.
You are eternal consciousness. Nothing can harm you or take that away from you. You are the infinite expanse of bliss filled consciousness that knows not even an iota of separation from its own unending source. Everything else is a modification of your own mind, a radiating mental kaleidoscope of conceptions brewed in your mind from absorbed ideas and your own desires.
We’re not there yet though. Your mind has to be ripened. Matured. Aged, as it were. It at least has to become malleable enough to realize its own plasticity, it’s own nuanced nature of receptivity. More often than not, we’re not aware of how we’re shaped, how our most ardent beleifs are formed. One drip at a time. One word at a time. Countless concepts have dropped into our cortex like droplets of rain on a stone in the forest, surreptiously shaping it for eons to come.
Every word creates something. An image. An impression. A memory. An idea. A feeling. All molding something, all imprinting somethign on the image of who we are. Complexiying us, expanding us, deepening us, elevating us. How subtle our minds are and how every insinuation from the outside world has a way of falling through the caverns of our heart, bouncing off the walls of our fixed concepts, ingratiating itself into our subconcious minds, planting potential seeds for a grand harvest in 6 months time. What words will stick, what will change, what will grow? We can hardly tell, but as much as possible, when we are receptive, or simply stubborn enough, those pith and potent ideas find a way into our inner recesses. Ultimaly, our own intelligence, our own wisdom, our own discernment, our own already illumined nature keeps those words that awaken nothign else but its own inner brilliance, its own unshakeable knowing. And when that happens, words of others, whether it is from Sages from thousands of years ago, or some kid on the new internet, become extensions of our most profound inner self, secret reminders sent by the soul to reawaken within us our own lost brilliance; that one thing we look for everywhere in the world and can only seem to find empty shadows of, even in the most well-lit of places.
And so, in conclusion, bear with me. Bear with me as this invisible thing inside trys to find its own way in the internet of things. Tweaks and morphs and blends itself to the zeitgeist of internet writing. Shortens its rambling tendencies to sound sharp. To cut like a scalpel through the fog of our neocortex. To awaken what is sleeping. To find a new rythmn and dance in a world that is ever changing. To declare ancient and silent wisdom in a world that is in a rush and crowded with noise. To allow the timeless to rediscover itself inside the very mechanisms that promote mindlessness.
Bear with me as we all hasten to awaken from our slumber. From the crowded minds and confusion that swirls around us, promising progess but often unaware of the quickening of demise, let’s seek a penetrating wisdom that will help us all find our way to that new ground that we can taste in the depths of our hearts, and make it manifest in the world beneath our feet.
