Words of Wisdom: My Motivational Fever Dream on Vimeo

“I hope you keep doing what you do. It matters to a lot of people.” — Rob de la Cretaz/fever dream (amalgamation)

I was hit by a summer bug over the weekend. Mostly it was that run-of-the-mill ickiness that comes with a cold, but I also got a lot of crazy, vivid dreams that one normally gets with a high fever.

As I was waking from a Sunday afternoon nap, the quote above ran through my mind in a particularly weird, dream-like fashion.

The past week I’ve been having bits of self-doubt. The second installment of my series on creative failure hasn’t really gotten the views that my first one has. Most of this was due to the fact that I got lucky and got picked up by a couple of high profile blogs that drove a ton of traffic to the first one on the day it was released.

I think it might also be due to the fact that the latest video is long. 35 minutes is a long time to sit and watch a talking head interview. However, I stand by my decision to keep it that long. There’s lots of great information in this video. And, even though I could have easily cut it up into multiple videos, I felt that was the same thing as cutting up an article to increase page views… that is to say a bit disingenuous.

So. The traffic wasn’t 1/10th of what the previous one was after one week. My lizard brain tells me that equals failure and that I shouldn’t try to do more.

But.

The reaction to this video over the weekend has been incredibly potent. The comments I’ve received online have been great, but what really meant a lot are the people who took the time to email me directly with their thoughts on the video and how they appreciate my purpose behind all this madness.

Exactly what constitutes a lot to my feverish subconscious is up for debate. But the fact that what I do matters to anyone besides me makes it all worthwhile.

And that, despite my lizard brain’s self-doubt, equals a huge success.

After all, it’s not about how many people see your work. It’s about what it inspires those who do watch to do afterward. We tend to forget about that in these days of “viral” distribution and traffic as success metric.

So, why did I write all this but commit the smallest part of it to video instead of the other way around?

Because, I think that in the end it’s all about the idea. As long as the idea is big, the execution around it can be small. The idea will carry it through.

The idea cooked up by my hallucinatory dream state is big. Not just for me, but for all of us. No matter what you do and how insignificant you feel your contribution to the world is, I can guarantee that there are more people than you realize that think exactly what came to me in my dream.

That’s enough to keep me barreling forward. How about you?