When I was a little kid, I took piano lessons. Oddly enough, one of my first favorite movies was Amadeus, and I felt certain that with enough piano lessons, I could play Mozart pieces and thoroughly enjoy myself forever and ever. If you’ve ever taken lessons on a musical instrument, you perhaps have experienced the odd sensation of stepping outside yourself. Your hands are flying across the keyboard or the strings and you think to yourself, “Huh. Weird. That’s me doing that.” Whenever I would have that sensation, the almost inevitable result was that I would mess up whatever I was playing.
I’m going to tell you a secret now. Are you ready?
I’m kinda feeling like that experience is happening in regards to this blog right here.
It all started with a tweet
A few days ago, I saw a tweet in my stream that led me to a post. And the post was titled in an almost verbatim way as a post I have yet to publish here. Same topic. Extraordinarily similar wording. At first I wasn’t all that bothered. “Oh, well, statistically it’s amazing this hasn’t happened before,” I told myself. But that didn’t really make me feel better. Because you see, that just made me realize that I’m blogging about things that tons, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are blogging about. There are probably countless posts similar to mine.
It’s true that I feel comfortable in my own voice here. It’s true that I work hard on this blog. It’s true that I enjoy it.
But am I really offering something important here?
Late to the party
As bloggers go, I’m pretty darned new to this world. There are all kinds of niches that have masters of the blog artform established as if in stone. Bloggers can turn to Brian Clark and Darren Rouse. Social Media types can turn to Chris Brogan and Jason Falls. Marketing types can turn to Seth Godin and Beth Harte.
Am I really going to catch up with folks like that? I think not.
So is the alternative to blog in the chicken coop, where everyone is trying to get into the same arena as those influential bloggers? What value is that to you as a reader?
The Roller Coaster (baby baby)
One thing I’m pretty sure super experienced bloggers don’t worry about is the roller coaster of being a new blogger in this very full, very competitive space. It’s pretty tough, I have to say. And while I have learned a lot, I still have a lot more to learn. Right at this moment, I’m feeling like I’m in a giant crowd of people, and all of us are talking about the same things, at the same time, but in different ways. Is that useful?
Has this post been written already?