Creating content is hard. Liking, sharing, and rating content is easy. With the click of a button, it has become easy to “respond” to the content in front of us but what about creating the content ourselves? Capturing a state of mind, painting the vision that you had, words that you want to say, or the dream that you want to transcribe is always difficult. It’s easy for us to criticize and rag on the content that others make but what if we were in their position?
After watching Casey Neistat’s 100th video, I’ve come to think more about how important that the highest position is to the development of our world. Every day, we use inventions and tools that were made by people that indirectly obtained the highest part of the pyramid. There are many steps that I must go through in order to publish this post. Right now, I’m typing this on a Macbook, on Sublime Text, which is in a repository via Git, sent to be hosted on Github. And each of these are tools that empower developers to write code, made by engineers used to further whatever ideas that the tools’ users may want to create.
Many people become hesitant to release their content because of criticism. Everyone and anyone who has created will have encountered feedback at one time or another: whether it be on homework that you slaved away for hours, a picture that you quickly drew up, a song that you wrote, a piece that you rehearse. Being vulnerable to the opinions of others is something that may always make a creator uncomfortable. Whether the feedback on a work could influence a creator positively or negatively, it should not be the final factor in whether it should be published.
Taking Casey Neistat as an example (again), he mentions on his vlogs that he does his editing then he continues on. Very much a fan of all his videos and content, if you couldn’t tell. =P Casey metions that he does not look back at old vlogs and needlessly reflects on them, but instead refines his style with each iteration. Being creative and putting all your focus onto one piece of work is not enough, but instead iterating over multiple different works. Creating multiple programs, multiple drawings, multiple videos, anything more than one. Eventually, one of your works will move your audience.
Even for this blog and me, there are many iterations that I go through for the content I produce. For instance, since you may have last visited the website, I’ve tweaked the design, which should look better on the eyes. Instead of the earlier red being prevalent throughout the website, I’ve tried for a two color scheme using black and a darker shade of red. I’ve also created many more drafts that you could see if you look at my Github, trying to flesh out more ideas and put my thoughts down somewhere. I can only continue to create more content as it is still very early in my “career.”
Could this be why some people choose to go into programming? Being able to create and develop applications that may end up empowering others to create even more? Though these people may not be heralded as the rockstars of their field, they continue to improve and develop their own tools for other people to use. Accomplishing what is needed to do and allowing users to work more efficiently is what helps us advance further. Unlike those who stop at every complaint and try the safest way, these hardworking people continue to trudge on for the better of their work.
So how should we go about treating the content available to us?
P.S. Do feel free to give me any feedback! I’d like to know opinions on my posts and website’s design!