Remember what you want to be doing

Remember what you want to be doing… remember what you care about and what you’re making.

I run a site for new dads and I get sidetracked from time to time looking at the “competition”, comparing my work to theirs, my “place” compared to theirs.

I get frustrated. “WTF!? How does this site have a pagerank of 4!?” “My god, who’s reading this stuff? And they rank for all that!?”

I could spend a shit-ton of time working my way up the list. It wouldn’t be tough. All I’d need to do is post something readable everyday. Maybe hunt for a few links here and there, too, but mostly just write a bunch and tweet about it and google starts to honor me with these abstract metrics.

But that’s not what I’ve committed to making. I’ve committed to making something better, to giving up on analytics and making something I love. I don’t want to blog a bunch and then have opportunities to promote other peoples’ products and then have to keep blogging a bunch and then have ideas I’d love to create but can’t because I have to blog a bunch and then end up with a body of work that has a few gems no one’s gonna wade through to read because I rank for “baby sourkrout stain fermentation.”

I’m just reminding myself on this one: Remember what I want to be doing.