This Is How To Strike Blogging ‘Gold,’ But It’s Rare

Photo by Lauren Mancke on Unsplash

The 2010 film Book of Eli follows a man wandering around in a post-apocalyptic United States dead set on delivering a book to San Francisco.

We don’t know what the book is until halfway through the movie, and up until that point our main character dodged bullets, killed countless bad guys with a machete, and slept in really crappy post-apocalyptic Airbnb’s to achieve his mission.

I was kidding about the Airbnb’s.

Eli, played by Denzel Washington, is going through hell. That’s my point. There were probably tons of moments along his journey that he didn’t want to continue, but the only reason he did is because he was sent by God.

We learn that later on in the movie.

In other words, he believed so much in the book he was carrying — the message of that book — that he kept walking, no matter what the personal cost was.

I believe we need to keep this same idea when writing our lives into existence online. Here’s why.

Some Blog Posts Are Bigger Than You

I was recently editing a podcast I recorded weeks ago with a few of my friends.

As I listened, I realized just how special this podcast was.

I already had motivation to edit the podcast, but hearing it again I realized I not only owed it to them to finish editing, but I owed it to everybody else, too.

They were dropping serious gems.

It would actually be a shame to keep this from the world.

To me, there’s a couple big reasons to create content online. The obvious one is to further your business, the second one is to find happiness in the act of creating, and the third one is to help others.

Most of the time the first or second of these “motivations” outweighs the third — sometimes by a lot — but what if that third motivation DRASTICALLY outweighs the others?

What if you’re writing a blog post you know will not further your business? What if you’re writing something that hurts more than it feels good?

But what if you also know this will dramatically help somebody?

To me, you have a duty now.

You have a broader responsibility to publish that that goes way past whatever it is you got into writing for in the first place.

Congratulations, not many people hear this call. Not many people want to, because they’re only really in it for themselves.

But you heard it, now what are you going to do?

It Just Needs To Effect One Person

I’m the biggest culprit of forgetting about the “1.” All bloggers are really only in it for the “1.”

The one person that will read and be transformed. Would you rather have 1,000 people be moderately effected reading a blog post of yours or 1 person read who’s dramatically effected?

The latter option might not make you a bunch of money or win you a bunch of clients but when you get down to it, you know there’s no better outcome from writing online than that.

There is not a more noble destination.

When you get a 1,000-word email from somebody pouring their heart out to you because of your blog post, you know you did good — it doesn’t matter if only 2 people viewed it.

So ask yourself this simple question…

Will it dramatically help one person?

If so, then you have a duty to keep going.

This Can Take You In A Brand New Direction

When you write a blog post like this, most of the time it’s emotional to get through.

I call this “getting to the source.”

A lot of people believe they need to write online to make money. That can definitely be a motivation, but REAL writers are just trying to get to the source of who they are. Why am I hurting? Why did ___ happen to me? What the hell is wrong with me? What the hell is wrong with the world?

We attempt to answer questions like these.

Real writing is bleeding your heart onto a page because you can, and because nobody can stop you, and because this is your story and it deserves a home.

I have a minor problem with people that don’t think bloggers are real writers. Real writers are people that bleed words for no other reason than the fact that it feels bad and oddly good at the same time.

That’s writing.

See, what I didn’t tell you at the start was this is actually the purest form of writing..

Finding a story that transcends yourself is gold in writing — a story so pure that it must be finished so others can benefit from it.

This is why we write. To find ourselves and to help others. I don’t know why we’ve forgotten that.

This may even take your whole writing career in a drastically different direction.

Now you know you need to write about this more. You’ve “found” a piece of yourself. What will you do now?

This Is Blogging Gold..

I write about a lot of topics. I like writing about social media, blogging, and making money online, but my best work has ALWAYS come from my most emotional places.

I wrote about my fading belief in God once. That was hard to get through. I wrote about a breakup I initiated that really drove someone to the edge. That was hard, too. I felt guilty.

My point is, writing should be fearless. This is the one place where it’s okay to say whatever you need to say. It’s art. It shouldn’t be judged. In fact, we should be angry at anyone that does judge our most emotional pieces.

Finding the source of who we are is blogging gold. It’s writing gold, really.

That should be our biggest aim above all.