Quitting blogging

On my recent days off I have spent a lot of time on my blog and have been reading quite a few posts from other bloggers, looking in particular at posting rituals of a wide variety of blogs. I like to see how everyone is different and how blogging works for them. Whether this is once a week or five times a day, posting frequency depends on the kind of blog.

However what I have noticed is there are certain blogs that have posted rather frequently (at least once every 2-5 days) that have seemingly just put and end to posting. The ones I noticed seemed to be relatively new blogs that I guess trialed out this whole WordPress thing and decided to call it a day. This is a big shame.

We all feel that we have a story to tell. And we do. The problem is when we set up a platform to share those stories we feel the little effort it took us to do so deserves the world’s attention immediately. This isn’t the case for everyone, some people just get bored of the repetitive nature or just move on to other things after realising this isn’t for them. But some bloggers quit after finding out that gaining a following and traffic doesn’t come overnight.

How many blogs don’t you know about? Most of them. WordPress has tens of millions of websites and the reason we don’t know about them isn’t necessarily because they are bad. Some of them will be for sure, however the main reason is because there are just so many of them out there.

They say if 99% of people think you’re ugly, 75 million people find you attractive. That is a hell of a lot of people that would be happy to call you theirs, but it isn’t easy to find those people. We have to put the effort in, leave our comfort zones and get out there. The chances that those 75,000,000 are knocking on your door are incredibly slim, life isn’t that easy. But it isn’t too difficult either, it just takes time and effort.

I was going to say it takes patience, and although this is true I didn’t want to use that word. I am not really a fan of the phrase ‘good things come to those that wait’, as it promotes reward for laziness. Good things come to those that want good things to happen, usually by action. Wealth doesn’t come by being patient enough to see the day, and blogging success doesn’t come by hitting the publish button and expecting people to read it. Readers like bloggers commitment. They like to know the routine of upload as to know when to expect new material. Readers like bloggers that don’t expect everything handed to them and acknowledge the time and effort that needs to be put into writing. Bloggers that set up a site and expect overnight success are doomed to fail, and this is true in almost every aspect of life.

What I love about blogging is that writing has taught me this and helped me understand the path to success isn’t an short one. I have a long way to go but a long road still has an end. Turning that car around isn’t going to do anything but take you back to where you were before, and there must have been a reason to start that journey in the first place.

 

Featured Photo by Eidy Bambang-Sunaryo on Unsplash

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Happy blogging,

Sam

Pessimism is laziness

I had a great day yesterday. I watched the highlights of the latest SpaceX launch, the Falcon Heavy. This included a Tesla car with a mannequin in the drivers seat being launched into orbit. What a time to be alive.

The footage can be seen here, the 20 minute mark is where you will see the action unfold. This action includes a seemingly perfect test flight, synchronized landings of the side boosters and that Tesla Car with a mannequin in the driver seat blasting Starman by Bowie.

On the YouTube channel, the following description is provided:

When Falcon Heavy lifts off, it will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two. With the ability to lift into orbit nearly 64 metric tons (141,000 lb)—a mass greater than a 737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage and fuel–Falcon Heavy can lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy, at one-third the cost. Falcon Heavy draws upon the proven heritage and reliability of Falcon 9.

Its first stage is composed of three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft. Only the Saturn V moon rocket, last flown in 1973, delivered more payload to orbit. Falcon Heavy was designed from the outset to carry humans into space and restores the possibility of flying missions with crew to the Moon or Mars.

Just reading this gets me all fired up. In a world in which we are constantly hearing about the crazy things Trump says and and reading about the latest tragedy to strike a community, it is great to read about an event that is nothing but beneficial for humanity. We are in the early stages of becoming a multi-planet species. How can this be boring to some people? It blows my mind that this doesn’t blow everyone’s mind. But we are all different with different interests.

An example of this was seen today on my social media. Someone posted the following onto Facebook:

I would hate to have this much money I could waste such vast amounts on shit space missions. #nooneisbothered

Surely it isn’t healthy to be this pessimistic. Skeptical is good, as we need to be very skeptical about what we are told in life. But to make such a statement is to not bother researching the thing you are criticising but remain motivated enough to criticise it anyway. Lazy and pessimistic go hand in hand, and can be a dangerous downward spiral that is hard to get out of. How many people on earth have the ambition shown in the video… To be wealthy enough to not just live a great lifestyle but dedicate this wealth to improving humanity. I genuinely feel Elon Musk is one of the few people that are truly interested in improving our species in a very selfless manner, finding gaps in our systems and looking to fill those gaps. One of the gaps being a one planet species and the issues with this.

It could be true that #nooneisbothered. Thankfully that doesn’t seem the case, the video is currently number one on Youtube’s trending. My response would be #bebothered. Life is too average to not look up to the people that have incredible vision and motivation, using money in productive ways. To be pessimistic here is to be lazy. There is no skill involved in being pessimistic, and we all have skills. It is easier to be negative than use these skills to be productive, although productivity will be much more rewarding in the long run.

To infinity!

 

Reaching for the stars

 A video went viral recently of a SpaceX rocket blasting out of the atmosphere. It was captured wonderfully by a cars dashcam. The camera also captured a pretty nasty car crash, I imagine caused by the huge distraction.

Here is the footage.

This is why I admire Elon Musk so much. During the Christmas period people complain about having to work, or going back to work, or about small injustices that blight our existence… This guy is planning to populate Mars in the upcoming decades largely fuelled by his own personal drive and motivation. He doesn’t complain, he just achieves. He is one of the few people I genuinely look up to that I feel is making a difference like no other. He isn’t making the next love song that we are all listening to on the car radio, he is deciding which planet we will be on at the time.

Did anyone else catch this on the news? Better still, is there anyone out there that witnessed this in person?

I cannot thank this guy enough for showing me where the boundary is, and that is is much higher than I thought.

Places I Need To See: Texas Adventure…Space Center Houston — A Feeling of Chaos (Re-blog)

I have a love/hate relationship with space. All I want to do is learn more about this terrifyingly vast and potentially infinite, mysterious unknown that we are born into and hurtling through at incomprehensible speeds. I have honestly had mild panic attacks sitting down outside on a clear evening gazing at the stars… have you ever leaned over the railing from a skyscraper or cliff edge and had that sweaty palm moment? I get that sometimes whilst gazing at the skies.

I don’t think that is a common effect of something so romantic and breathtaking, and that being said, it doesn’t stop my fascination. If anything it helps to build it.

A Feeling of Chaos has typed up a nice piece on her visit to the NASA Space Center in Houston, a place I would love to see in my lifetime. To see a shuttle would be amazing. To see it piggy-backed by a 747? No words.

This immense power and capability only makes me wonder what the future has in store. I admittedly have been following Elon Musk’s SpaceX updates more than NASA, as he has been putting in some damn fascinating plans for Mars exploration and population. Will this be a competitor for NASA? If anything helps technology move forward, it is competition.

That being said, I am very jealous of this visit! You can read all about it below.

I am totally and utterly in love with outer space; and I have been since I was in the 6th grade. Anything and everything about space makes me act like a little kid in a candy shop. So I figured I would do whatever it took to visit Johnson Space Center…or at least the visitor […]

via Texas Adventure…Space Center Houston — A Feeling of Chaos