A funny thing happened when I watched the video for the BBC music cover of God Only Knows.
I realized there were more than just a couple of artists singing that I didn’t recognize and conceded that maybe my daughter is correct, I am not as familiar with some modern musicians as I had thought.
Didn’t matter that you could play The Beach Boy’s original version and I could sing along without missing a beat because that didn’t provide me with any insight into who participated in BBC Music’s cover.
Still thinking about some of the things we talked about in Maybe We All Need More Cowbell and the impact those lost icons impressed upon our lives.
And that sort of conversation always makes me think about old friends and friendships that no longer are as well as questions about what artists will impact my children.
What music will they look back upon as being the most important of their formative years and should I be concerned that I don’t know more details about some of these mystery artists.
Some years ago I shared this quote in a group setting and several people said it sounded to them like I was an adrenaline junkie.
It made me laugh a bit because even though I find a lot of extreme sports to be of great interest I wouldn’t be the poster boy for any of them.
I love thinking about skydiving, hang gliding and mountain climbing but I haven’t done any of them and can’t say for certain that I will.
Well, skydiving is something that will probably end up being crossed off of my bucket list but I can’t tell you when but this isn’t where this post is supposed to head so let’s circle back.
My interpretation of that Rumi quote is to focus on spending time with people who fuel your fire, folks who fill your heart and make your soul smile.
It is about living with intention and not just floating through time and space.
If I am described at my funeral as having just passed time and waited for life to happen I will have failed.
Failed myself and my kids.
That is not who I want to be or who I am.
It is fine to have brief moments of passing time, but it should only be part of the bridge to the next place.
God Only Knows Who’ll Read This
A former editor once asked me if I could tell them who was reading my material, “God only knows who they are and whether they read my words or click through as fast as they can.
“That doesn’t inspire confidence, can’t you tell me more?”
I told them I could absolutely tell them more but that it would never have as much detail as they wanted.
That is because free online analytics services as limited and comments, tweets and shares are limited too.
Those analytics conversations are a mixed bag, sometimes I find them really interesting and sometimes I see them as the bane of a writer’s existence.
When you spend more time worrying about conversions than content you miss out on a lot.
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I try to spend a significant amount iof time writing each day because I need the practice and I find it enjoyable.
I am probably averaging about 6,000 words a day, but most of those aren’t published here.
There is no substitute for doing the work the craft requires.
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I will concede that it would be nice to know more about who is reading these posts and why but I have intentionally not spent time digging deeper.
That is because for the moment I don’t want to drift into only writing about one particular topic. I don’t want this place to only be filled with posts about technology, parenting or writing.
I want to just write and not worry about how many readers stick around or don’t.
Eventually I’ll hit that place where I want to focus on building the readership up again and I’ll dig into my analytics and focus on writing the kind of posts that bring a larger volume of traffic in, but not today.
Today is all about feeding that fire and just enjoying the time I get to dedicate to writing.
