March 2018 – HELLO, I'M SETH WERKHEISER

Ignore the Numbers and Just Create

Great quote from artist Rob Janoff, who created the Apple logo.

“Most people, especially young people, put a lot of care and a lot of love into whatever they create, and when they get criticism it’s a crusher. I spend so much time talking about how this criticism is not about you. ‘I like you, but this piece you did has these things I don’t like, and here’s why.’”

Replace criticism with “lack of views” or “lack of likes.” Don’t let the numbers sway you. Ignore the numbers, the data, which Seth Godin calls the “lazy way to the bottom.”

“It is the lazy way to figure out what to do next. It’s obsessed with the short-term.”

Listen to Seth answer how he gauges his work without data on the Design Matters podcast here (I time-stamped it, and listened to the entire interview three times already).

If I gauged the success of Skull Toaster back in 2011 and 2012 I would have shut it down. But I stuck with it, and today, nearly seven years later (seven years in October 2018), it’s a vibrant social media channel, and email newsletter, and has a wonderful paying membership.

How does Seth Godin know what he’s doing is effective? Because people tell him. And that’s what we all need, not 100 more “followers.” Make something so good that it delights and changes people.

Hang Out With Dreamers

Wise words from Thor Harris on The Creative Independent.

“The company you keep will make or break you. Find the most honest, smartest, kindest, most creative people who will tolerate you.”

Yes, this. You have to find people who have the audacity to dream. You’ll meet plenty of people who will feed you reasons why your creative endeavours won’t work. But meeting people who “get” you? Oh, that’s the magic, right there. Seek these people out.

Swap email addresses, meet for coffee, work on projects together. Energy attracts energy, so do your best to find it.

Listen to Non-White Dude Podcasts

Oh my goodness, Trin here (from the Friendshipping podcast, below) is so right (link to the Tweet is here). As a cis-het white man I’ve been trying my best to listen to more varied voices, understanding that great ideas and concepts come from everyone, not just the loudest dude-bro in the room (or online).

I lived in Philadelphia for six months in 2013, and I’d bounce between a few coffee shops, but always had a spot in my heart for Menagerie and didn’t really know why – until I read this interview with the co-owners from 2014.

“And I think the space (Menagerie Coffee) is kind of feminine in a subtle way. I don’t think it’s obvious, but if you spent some time here and then walked over to Elixr, you’d be very overwhelmed. It’s gorgeous, beautiful, but it’s overwhelmingly masculine.”

Oh my goodness, Elixr is totally masculine. It’s weird – I’ve been there once, and it just wasn’t for me, but Menagerie coffee was for me. I’ve been thinking about this since 2014!

Continue reading “Listen to Non-White Dude Podcasts”

Your Job Just Changed

Guess what? You’ve got something new to add to your job description.

There is a receptionist I know.

She works at a busy, busy practice. But when you’re in her waiting room, you feel like you’re in her living room.

She’s warm. She delights in seeing you (and “you” could be you, me, your mother’s friend, Carl). But what touches me the most is that she looks you in the eye and greets you by your name. And I am ennobled in her waiting room.

I’ve wondered if that’s part of her job description. And what a brilliant description! Part of your job is to see and celebrate people.

Don’t blame me, I found out from Caitie’s ‘The Lightning Notes.’

Yeah, the receptionist at my doctors office doesn’t do this at all, but you know what? I can be the patient who she looks forward to. Not for some narcissistic reason, expecting the red carpet to be rolled out for me when I arrive.

No, the opposite. We’re the ones doing the work.

When we leave any establishment we should leave a wake of good feelings. In a world where customer facing service is seen as a battle front we can be filling those “soldiers” with respect and care and kindness.

You’re hired.

Willed from Wires is Still Alive

When I got rid of all my stuff and left NYC in 2010, the only thing I wanted to do was hang out with my friends that I hadn’t seen in a long time. In between all those hang sessions were quiet times in coffee shops and bus stations. With some of that downtime I started drawing again. As you can see by the photo above (from 2012), I was drawing quite a bit.

Then someone offered to buy some of my robot drawings. I got custom orders. A few bulk orders. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I was selling drawings of robots out of my back pack.

I made a small run of a zines filled with my robot drawings. I made city-specific pieces and posted them online to help pay for bus fare, or coffee for the week. Over the years my Willed From Wires Big Cartel store sat there, doing it’s job.

It’s 2018 and I still get the occasional order for a robot drawing or two. Mostly former clients, but the occasional random order. Willed From Wires remains a hobby, very much on the side, one that I don’t push much. I last made this depressing Tweet from the @willedfromwires account in 2013.

I’m writing about all this now – in 2018 – to illustrate that everything we do creatively can still live and grow without feeding the social media beast. I can’t do several things full-time. No one can. But we can do side things that are actually on the side, and they can still flourish and grow.

Practice the Wake-Up Practices

I love this bit from ‘How we Handle the Stuff That Gets in the Way‘ from Caitie Whelan,

The most enlivening counter I’ve found to this are regular wake-up practices.

Walking, driving, making dinner without music, podcasts, phone calls. Meditation or contemplation, even if only for two minutes. Writing down any insights that arise in silence, no matter how minor they seem.

When I’m stuck, staring at my computer screen and shaking my fist, unable to focus, to finish, to create, I remember the wake-up practices. Usually I get on my shoes and go for a walk in the woods or a drive to nowhere in particular. Just something that requires a bit of focus on the present – don’t drive off the cliff, stay on the walk path – and that wakes my spirit. It clears some of the channels in my brain that got filled up with static and mush.

Schedule Time for Good Things

I’ve always thought of my running as a pretty private undertaking. Sure, I share some photos on occasion on social media, but compared to other runners I appear quite reserved. When I started running back in 2016 I decided to not really write about my “fitness journey” because I feared not following through. What if I stopped after my first 5K race? Or if I got hurt and couldn’t run for a month or six? What then?

It’s been nearly two years now, and I think I’m a runner now. I guess maybe it’s safe to write about it.

Continue reading “Schedule Time for Good Things”

You Don’t Have Time to Read All the Comments

I learned back in the mid 2000s to never read the comments. When you give a bad review of an album, fans (and sometimes the band) will sometimes have a few comments about your review.

Tricky is a smart, brilliant, informative show about online journalism, social media, and more hosted by Heather Chaplin and Emily Bell, from the Journalism and Design program at The New School. In their latest episode they discuss comments and moderation with Andrew Losowsky of the Coral Project, who rips into a few great points here (time stamped link to the audio, give it a listen).

I love the part of the “precarious position” when offloading your comments (and community building) to 3rd party sites like Facebook and Twitter. Think FB live video interviews and Twitter. Two types of “fan building” strategies, but like Losowsky mentions, you are “handing over the ownership of the direct relationship between you and the reader, to a 3rd party who will monetize that and sell it back to you.”

It’s true. All of it.

Seeing all that engagement and interaction on FB and Twitter looks great, and it might even get you more followers and likes. But think about it: what does Facebook require of you to reach 100% of those people who clicked “like?”

Pay up.

The same is true of Twitter if you look at your analytics – ain’t no way all your followers saw your last Tweet.

Yes, trying to do the same thing on your own site is harder. It’s not as good looking. It probably won’t net you the same number of likes or faves or whatever.

But if it gets you one email address, then you can reach someone directly. If they signed up for your mailing list, you’ve now started a relationship.

Sure, the same could happen on Twitter. You can meet some great people on there – I HAVE! But we don’t all have the time (or sometimes the headspace) to “hang out” on social media all the time to build and maintain these relationships. I’m not talking about short changing the relationship, or devaluing one email to a mere transaction.

Instead I mean this: if the goal is to be a 24/7 news outlet with employees and an office, do what you have to do. But if you’re a lone artist, musician, writer – chances are your efforts are better spent on your craft than on building up digital badges on social media.

Even now as I write this I feel like I need to push the link more on Twitter, and “engage” in conversation over there about this subject. Then other people can chime in! Look at this big, public discourse!

But I also want to go for a run. I have client work to do, too.

Just as a newsroom may not have the resources to moderate comment sections across their entire website, you, a lone creator, probably don’t have the resources to do 432098 things at once, either.