“Your value will be not what you know; it will be what you share.” – Ginni Rometty

This quote was suggested to me by the Stoic journaling app I was suggested on the Apple App Store. It’s a guided journal app, which seems like it would be something I needed, since I have a whirlwind constantly going in my head. I eventually got annoyed with it, but at least it gave me a couple good quotes, including this one.

What Ginni Rometty said is something I’ve known intuitively for much of my life. People can talk until they’re blue in the face with lifelong learning, but your knowledge is only valuable if you actually share it with people. You can’t take what you know with you when you pass, far as we know. So, it makes sense to share what you know, putting your skills and expertise to use in creating actionable advice and frameworks. Otherwise, you’re just hogging useful information that could better those around you and your immediate world in real, tangible ways.

When it comes to sharing, though, I don’t necessarily know what’s worth sharing and how to do so effectively. As someone who’s been writing down my thoughts for the majority of my life, it’s immensely frustrating to find myself at an impasse with what exactly I’m trying to say. I’ve written some decent pieces lately, but only after forcing myself to outline what I’m getting at so I don’t fly ridiculously off course like perhaps eighty percent of my drafts inevitably do. 

It’s not like I’m stuck on ideation, but when it comes to putting these ideas to work I’m often at a loss. I find myself working on at least a couple of drafts a day; sometimes I end up working on more if I’m really struggling to find a draft that’s speaking to me on that particular day. No, I don’t need more drafts, but as long as I’m completing them within a reasonable time frame—the more immediate the better—then I’m going to be able to get in a far better working rhythm and hopefully a much clearer headspace, as well.

I also have been struggling with retreating into myself again. My website doesn’t get nearly the views it once did. Partly this is because I’ve wiped out every post on my site at least three times now and simply started from scratch. I’ve reposted many of the better things, but it seems that the search engines didn’t treat me kindly with that sudden reboot. Still, it was necessary for my mental health—how could I possibly bring hundreds of essays up to the expectations I now set for website content with them still sitting there live and imperfect? 

Gone are the days when I could simply post an essay and people would stumble across it and get something out of it. It seems the only thing I can do is give into social media nonsense and post on TikTok if I want to get any eyeballs on my content. I’m not doing that. 

If no one reads what I have to say, I have to just shrug my shoulders and move on. That critical mass I’ve been chasing for over a decade simply hasn’t come to me yet. I guess I just need to stop chasing it and focus all my energies on simply creating and making sure I’m sharing it in a way that people connect to. Otherwise, I may as well just give up and play Diablo Immortal every waking minute in between journaling check-ins. What kind of life would that be?

~ Amelia Desertsong