Let’s follow the educational and professional path that society expects kids and young people to follow in order to be happy and successful. Let’s say the the child enjoys playing video games, so a well-intended adult plants the seed in the kid’s head that he should think about a career developing video games. That makes sense, right?
Down the Rabbit Hole
So, the child grows up and signs up for some programming courses at the local technical school. He gets an internship at a video game studio and is hired as a junior member of the development team. Great, right? Along the way, he gains more experience and hones his skills. He starts to specialize in a certain genre of game, and then a certain element of game development. He specializes further and further and further.
Except now he’s bored. He doesn’t want to code video games anymore. Maybe he wants to compose music. Maybe he wants to work with his hands. Maybe he wants to be a chef. Maybe he wants to be a photographer. But he can’t do these things, because he’s specialized too far and gone too far down the rabbit hole.
Shiny Object Syndrome
It also doesn’t help that, possibly due to all those video games and all that Internet browsing, he’s developed the attention span of a goldfish. He can’t stay focused on anything and keeps yearning to move on to something else.
Does this sound anything like you?
The problem with the way that modern industrialized society has been set up is that it asks its citizens to be little more than a cog in the machine. You have your role. You have your tasks. Now, get really good at just that role and just those tasks, stuffing yourself into an increasingly small pigeon hole.
But for many of us, our psyche just isn’t like that. We like to explore all sorts of different things and we don’t want to get stuck with just one set of tasks and just one role. Well, I’ve got good news for you and, if you are reading this blog, it’s probably pretty applicable to your situation.
The Rise of the Blogger
If you have a hard time focusing, if you’re the kind of person who likes to dabble in multiple disciplines, then you just may be the perfect blogger. Think about it. The blogger really can be the modern day Renaissance man (or woman), because of all the different responsibilities that we have.
As a professional blogger, you should be a good writer. So, you’ll take some time to improve your writing skills. You should also be good with images and image editing, because blog posts need pictures. And then there’s content management, as well as the technical side of design, coding, plugins, and web development. And let’s not forget about social media, affiliate marketing, search engine optimization, sales and marketing… the list goes on and on.
Can you outsource most of these tasks? Absolutely. And if you want to be successful as a blogger, you probably will. At the same time, your personality is such that you want to explore these different aspects to keep your day-to-day as fresh as possible. Even when you outsource, you can still tackle these needs yourself. Look at this blog. John outsources some of the writing to folks like me, but he still writes himself too.
A New World Every Day
To be a successful blogger, you’ll need to be a quick learner and you’ll need to adapt to new situations. You’ll need to be innovative by tapping into your previous experience, synthesizing it with your newfound expertise to move forward. You don’t need to pigeon hole yourself, nor should you. Indeed, having the attention span of a goldfish just might be your greatest strength as a blogger.