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I recently wrote a post on “Seeking Validation and the Rat Race of Social Media” (link provided at the end of this post), in which I explore the relationship between social media platforms and the dopamine hit of being “liked” or “followed” in contrast with going about the meaningful work of our lives for the sake of that meaningful work. But what is meaningful work and how do we go about it? These are questions I’m still mulling over. I offer my thoughts here as one part of a conversation still in progress. I will talk about the context of writing because that is my particular work, but stick with me because I believe these thoughts translate to a lot of contexts. Whether you are creating something, serving clients, running a business, or being a parent, we all have to face the question of “why do we do the things that we do?”

As part of my exploration, I’ve read a series of posts on Substack from Karen Swallow Prior on the topics of Platform, Publishing, and Perspective (I’ll link them at the bottom of this post). She, and a host of other authors, are wrestling with these concepts of how to balance the creative writing life with the monetary demands of making a living, selling books, and putting their work out in the world. More and more the publishing industry is expecting authors with book deals to do their own marketing and selling of their book, let alone those of us who haven’t yet made it through the golden hoop of landing the book contract in the first place. So creatives find themselves caught between this crazy tension of being authentic and devoted to their work and what they love to do, and also being shamelessly promotive so their publishers and their personal bills can get paid.

This seems to pose the question: Does my work matter because my work intrinsically matters? Or does my work matter only if it’s welcome, seen, paid for, and applauded? Is it the doing of the work that matters? Or the sharing of it?

In the course of her articles, Prior works to define some terms:

Platform

She notes that people often think of platform as social media, how many likes and followers a person has. But according to Prior, platform has nothing to do with followers; it’s who you are and the work you do. She states, “A literal platform is something someone stands on to communicate, allowing one to be better seen and heard. A publishing platform isn’t all that different. Sometimes that something that makes one stand out from the crowd can be an experience, but most of the time it is, more simply, experience. And most experience comes from work. Platforms are built from work you have already done.”

Later she continues, “It’s too easy to lose sight of the fact that platform is a means, not the end. Platform gives you standing, so others will know you have something valuable to say.”

So what does this mean? It means that if all a person does is generate content or make choices specifically with the intent of garnering followers or gaining attention, that isn’t platform. And it doesn’t build solid work to stand on. In the end it will likely leave a person empty and without a platform to stand on at all.

Audience

If getting likes and followers isn’t the substance of a platform, they are a part of having an audience. Prior eventually boils the distinction between the two down to this simple idea: If platform is a what, the work you do, then audience is the who, the people who read, receive, buy or consume what you have to offer.

Prior states, “We sometimes use the word platform when what we really mean is audience. In this numbers-obsessed, algorithm-driven culture, it’s especially easy to confuse the two. Those who wish to enter the publishing world must, necessarily, build their audience. Hence, the emphasis on follower counts and engagement stats.”

But she also points out, “To confuse audience and platform risks neglecting the work (the authority, the expertise, the very reason for having an audience). What good is it to fill up an auditorium only to step on the stage and deliver … a nothingburger.”

Why does defining these things matter?

For me, someone who just quit her “legit” job to write, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of questions about my legitimacy. I’ve heard from some regarding the traditional publishing industry that “the ship is sinking.” It’s discouraging to hear that all of the decisions about what gets selected and published mostly comes down to cost and profit, not necessarily the quality or worthiness of content. Other people see brighter prospects about the self-publishing world. Either require you to be able to market yourself and sell books, something most creatives cringe at. So what am I trying to do? Can I make money on what I write? Is that even the question to ask?

My Why

One of the takeaways from this for me is to return over and over to the reasons that I write. And those reasons can’t only be publication or likes on the internet. Yes, I want my work to make its way out in the world. I’d like to be able to share it with a wider audience than just my friends and family. I’d like it to be meaningful and leave an impact on others someday. But those aren’t the core reasons of why I write. They can’t be, or else I could stake all my time and effort on something that could fail but is also outside of my control.

I write because I’m designed to write. I think God made me that way. It’s my unique thing. Yours is probably something else. I often think of the Olympic runner, Eric Liddell, when he said, “God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.” I feel that way when I write. It’s not always pleasurable in the moment. I deal with self-doubt. I get writer’s block. I have to drag myself through the pages some days. But when I’ve put words down on paper, I feel like I’ve done something that I’m designed to do. I feel more like myself. Writing days are better days than those that aren’t.

I also write because it helps me process. Coalescing ambiguous thoughts and experiences into clear words helps me find my way through emotions, trauma, questions, spirituality, and relationships. Some of that writing is private in my journal. Some of it I vulnerably offer to you in the hopes it helps give you words and ideas and aids to light your way.

In particular, I write fiction because I believe stories are powerful. Well-told, they are capable of saying things about what it means to be human that other forms of writing cannot.

I also write these blog posts and am working on a memoir because I want to take the things I’ve found impactful in my life and pass them on. Somewhere inside I’m a more reserved, grown-up version of my five-year-old daughter who excitedly wants to show me something she’s made or done, or watch her jump from the couch for the bazillionth time. See, isn’t this beautiful?! I want to show you, so I write it down.

A friend texted me this thought from a songwriter, Mark Armstrong. I don’t know his music, but I don’t have to. He’s a creative, and I would benefit from reading this thought every day I sit down to write: “It’s taken me four decades to understand that art is not selfish, but generous. When you make it and share it, you’re giving a gift to the world. (That gem is stolen from songwriter Dan Wilson.) One person may appreciate it, or one million people. How other people react to it is not your responsibility. All you have to do is put it out there, while you still can.”

Being Faithful to the Daily

What I keep returning to is that putting in the work is what matters. Social media and the world of viral videos trick us into believing it might be possible to get famous and get famous quick! My experience with a brief day of high traffic on my blog is a small example of this (see my post on Seeking Validation and the Rat Race of Social Media), but it doesn’t hold and it doesn’t last, not if you aren’t putting in the work. I’ll repeat that doing things only to get likes or followers makes for shallow work, a mirage that can all fall apart. It’s empty. It also means leaving your worth at the whims of the public on how they feel about you on any given day.

A friend of mine who is a therapist recently told me, “If I measured my success or sense of purpose on how my clients are doing on any given day, I’d feel horrible.” This made me think twice. She’s a therapist—a good one from what I can tell. From my perspective it’s easy for me to think that her work naturally lends itself to being more purposeful, that she’s daily changing lives, helping them process trauma, learning boundaries, instilling worth, etc. Whereas I’ve been grading the same freshman composition papers over and over the last eight years, which only a handful of people (at most) care about. As a teacher, I constantly faced the question: does what I do on a daily basis really matter?

On a good day I might have an interaction with a student where I know I’m instilling value in their life, honoring their personhood, teaching them boundaries or how to advocate for themselves. I might even get a once a year thank you note for how they enjoyed my class. On a bad day I might get an angry, red-font letter from a helicopter parent after I set hard boundaries for a student who turned in an AI generated paper, and no one in my home thanks me for doing the dishes, five loads of laundry, watering the garden, and picking up clutter all day so we don’t all trip across the floor. Instead, my five-year-old whines about the dinner I’ve put on the table before she even tastes it. I’m exhausted at night, having the sense that I worked hard all day and I’m not sure what I accomplished.

However, what my friend-the-therapist’s comment showed me is that she faces the same questions. I have a tendency to romanticize the idea of being a therapist. Perhaps because I can see the value from the receiving end of sitting with a good therapist. But my friend faces the same day-in and day-out grind that I do, often having no idea if what she is offering her clients is working or taking effect.

I’ve also been with my personal therapist now on and off (but mostly on) for nine years. It’s been an accumulative effect over a long period of time. What I find this teaches is that we have to do the work, day in and day out, not knowing what the outcome will be. I spent eight years doing my best to teach my students critical thinking and basic skills such as how to write an effective thesis statement and rhetorically reach an audience, but I will never know where most if not any of them end up in life and how those skills from my course serve them in the years to come. Now, I’m writing words, and sometimes sharing them on the interwebs. But I’ll likely never know the outcome of where those words reach, even if I do succeed at publishing books. I won’t know each reader of my work. I won’t get to hear their personal story and where my words fit in their journey.

My husband has told me that the big content creators on Youtube, they aren’t big because they went viral. They are big because they’ve done the work of posting content consistently. Often every day. Prior points out that when considering really successful Christian woman bloggers who are household names in certain circles today, people who try to emulate them “don’t account for the fact that these women labored largely unknown for years and, more importantly, didn’t set out in hopes of gaining the wide platforms they have.”

I think the point of all this is just to do the work. Get up every day and do it. Whether it’s washing dishes and doing laundry, selling HVAC systems, seeing clients, teaching students. You fill in the blank on what your daily grind contains. Get up and do it. Hopefully with an effort to be fully present in the work. You won’t know the effect. At least for a long time. Parenting is full of years of thankless tasks and I hope that someday I’ll see a responsible, well-enough balanced human being at the end of the road. But most days it’s just exhausting piles of dishes and laundry and a continuous stream of trying to train my child not to whine. For me, it’s also facing the daunting blank page day after day. I have one manuscript finished. Can I make another? How about another?

The point is not to know the effect. The point is to do the work. Lay one brick, one sentence, one interaction with my child at a time. The results of what happens next are out of my hands.

Referenced Resources:

• Seeking Validation and the Rat Race of Social Media
• Three posts by Karen Swallow Prior on Platform, Publishing & Perspective
  • Part 1
  • Part 2
  • Part 3

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