I remember reading a story many years ago about a famous singer who closed his twitter account – with about four million followers. Most people thought he’d lost his mind and the move would hurt his music career. But in interviews he explained that he did it to save his music. He said that instead of using his energy to write and release songs, he was using it to write and post tweets.
Why would he tweet instead of write songs? It simple:
- Writing and releasing a song takes weeks or months.
- Posting a tweet takes a few seconds.
A lot of us are guilty of this. Instead of using our energy to do creative work that matters – we vomit our thoughts and opinions all over social media. I wonder how many creative works have not been created because the artist wrote a quick tweet instead? My guess is, a lot. It’s a real problem, but what can we do to change it?
A first step would be to slow down. Instead of rushing to share our personal opinions on every news story every day – we can use our energy to create creative things that are more valuable to the world.
Q: What’s more valuable to the world than a social media post?
A: Just about anything.
Write a poem, paint a picture, draw a cartoon, make up a song, grow a garden, cook a meal, build a deck, design a t-shirt. etc. etc.
After we’ve created our work that matters we have something worth sharing online. That would be a much better use for social media than mindlessly vomiting every thought onto social media like everyone else. I’ve already made the change and have an album’s worth of songs to show for it that will come out this year. This is your invitation to do it too.
It won’t be easy. Creative work takes time and effort.
But then again – every good thing does.
See you in the future – M