Luke’s $10k A Week Blog

The nice terrible thing about blogging is that you can make a commitment and not have to live up to it. What serious consequences will there be for me not updating three times per week for the past month? There are a few different ways I can choose to look at it…

Perspective #1: “I broke a PROMISE? Shame on me!”

Logically, this is correct. I committed to 3 times per week, and failed to continue AT ALL for over a month. A promise is a promise. If I can’t live up to a promise like this, what’s to say I wouldn’t live up to a more important promise? As a child, I was taught to keep promises — breaking them is a very bad habit to get into. I wholeheartedly disapprove of breaking commitments, and therefore must feel ashamed about this one.

Perspective #2: “There’s far MORE IMPORTANT things in this world.”

I made a promise to a blog audience to update three times weekly. But if I fail to do so, the consequences to them as individuals are fairly minor. They may miss out on some sage advice / education, they don’t get the chance to form a relationship with me (or rather my blogging persona) as much, and are a bit less entertained. Maybe they get irate. But they have the option of spending their time on other blogs, or going through previously written articles here. The worst part of it all is probably the confusion left by my insisting that I wouldn’t quit.

However, by contrast, if I were to fail to keep my promise to love and support my wife, it would be a much more drastic effect for her. My whole world could fall apart. So if it comes to choosing between the two, I should definitely spend time with her, and focus on her needs. Thus my life has had more of a focus on spending time with her, as well as working to earn money to support her. (BTW: IdaCold ended, lately it’s been Root Rents at $8/hr — through the same staffing agency.)

Perspective #3: “It’s all JUST BUSINESS.”

It is tempting to take this too far because on the internet, relationships and activities tend to center around business, entertainment, and education. The element of personal bonding is limited, or rather I should say our intentional limitation of personal bonding is easier to effect. This is because in the medium of text, the connection between two people is lower bandwidth. Gestures and facial expressions are nonexistent — only writing style is present.

When it comes to purely business contacts, you do need to take into account variables like trust and how well your brand is being represented — but it does not have to be quite as serious as your sense of personal morality and how you treat your friends. Yes, ethics are important (and cheating people is definitely a matter of personal morality) but there’s a certain line where meeting the expectations of your customers 100% ceases to be such an important matter — and making money off them becomes the primary concern.

And where making money is concerned, I have to admit I’ve made more by not blogging (working instead) than by blogging, so far.

Conclusion

Ultimately, I don’t see it as a matter of choosing between the three perspectives. Real life is more complicated than that. I see it as more an act of balancing between them. Yes, the fact is (#1) I broke a promise and am ashamed of it. But that’s not going to make me too very guilty in this instance because of #2 (supporting my wife is more important), and to some extent #3 (from a business perspective, it’s a matter of balancing costs and benefits, rather than feeling guilty for every slip-up.)

Does my recent failure mean I don’t deserve to make $10k/week? Absolutely not. Deserving the money (on a personal level) is actually beside the point. There exist plenty of people who are little more than con artists that make millions of dollars, just as there are plenty of hard-working and honest people who make their way to lucrative incomes by providing value. I probably deserve it more than many millionaires, and yet less than some poor people. If I make $10k/week it will be because I provided enough value and became widely enough recognized for that value — nothing more or less.

My standards for myself as a person are higher — and may be unattainable. I want to be more disciplined and trustworthy even on the little things. So I will make this a lesson in personal values — don’t promise too much, plow ahead when you make them. I’m not going to say “hey please trust me, I’m reformed now” or any of that garbage. That kind of trust must come from actions, not words. But I do apologize for my failure (even if it’s not such a big deal).

Related posts:

1. Is It Personal Or Business? Bloggers Must Walk A Line

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 10:36 am and is filed under philosophy of success. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.