Wasted Time

There are some aspirations that we develop as children that we later abandon in life.  Most of these aspirations revolve around superlatives, the idea of being the best at something or being the first to complete a gargantuan task.  For example when I was a child I wanted to know everything there was to know about everything, knowledge was my aspiration.  As I grew, the reality sunk in that this task was impossible, and I accepted as a compromise that I would try and find out everything I could about the things I had an interest in.  Other children have aspirations such as wealth, the desire to be the richest person that ever lived, or to have all the money in the world.  Like my realisation of the reality we live in, sooner or later you come to accept these tasks are impossible - or at least in a practical sense for most people they are impossible - you can at least argue here that the number one spot on the rich list would satisfy that goal, good luck with that ambition if you still chase it.

The other aspiration that is perhaps the most common is the desire to be liked by everyone.  You could simply call this popularity, but there's a little more to it than that.  The desire is ultimately guided not by numbers but by the ambition to have everyone you meet like you as a person.  Again at some point in your life you have to realise that isn't possible to achieve.  Some people will like you and others will not.  Of those who do not like you, you will not always know why, and neither will they.  Whether or not we like someone isn't always a rational or reasonable decision.  Usually it's not even a conscious choice.

There are a lot of different people who read this blog.  To date they hail from 36 different countries.  This isn't that surprising to me given that it is written in English so it will be predominantly English speaking countries that would even find it in the first place.  The other reason it isn't surprising to me is that unlike other sites and blogs that I have worked on, I have made no effort to promote or market this blog.  I occasionally share a link to it on Twitter but that's about all, and very little traffic to this blog actually comes from Twitter, most of it comes from either Google or it is organic [direct] traffic probably through a bookmark or a link I have sent people.  The fact this blog is still quite obscure doesn't concern me much.  I have said many times that I write this blog primarily as a diary and a means to document my thoughts and feelings about many different things.  Not everyone who finds this blog in the first place will even be interested in what I have written.

If you find this blog interesting then, welcome, there's plenty to read at this point so have a look around.  If you don't find it interesting, I'd have to wonder how or why you made it this far.  Regardless, you don't have to like or even agree with anything I write.  That's not the point.  It shouldn't take you long to realise whether you want to keep reading or not.  I would however remind you that you are here of your own volition.  I am not making you read this, nor is anyone else.  You can click away and go elsewhere if you want.  There is a lot of content online that is created by many different people, and so long as that content is legal, and wasn't created for the purpose of trolling others, in general when you disagree with something you should really just move along.  There's a temptation to engage in debate and to try and argue with content creators, but whatever platform you choose to do this on, you have to realise the only person whose time you're actually wasting is your own.  I'm not going to change someone's mind or their outlook on the world with one blog post, and you're not going to change mine.  People have to want to change from within for them to be open to another point of view for a start, before you even engage in any other discourse.  If they aren't open to that change, you're wasting your time.