Why I Do It

My brothers had the time of their lives last week.

My parents got them passes to a YouTube convention here in Utah. They met some of their favorite celebrities (apart from Imagineers and Muppeteers, obviously). These celebrities include the Ballinger family, a cute Christian family whose dad is a magician and um I'm not sure what else it is they do but now they're famous, and my brothers are obsessed. They've been talking about the cute little boy in the family, Parker, for years. Yesterday they sent me approximately 10,000 photos of them hanging out with Parker. Because apparently they actually got to hang out with celebrities at this convention. It sounds waaay cooler than Comic Con.

I think Little Brother would love to attend this convention as an actual guest. He's had various YouTube channels over the years with varying degrees of success. A few years ago, he committed himself to a schedule of posting videos. After a few months, he told me that he didn't want to do it anymore. He said it was too stressful and it wasn't bringing him any happiness.

Here's what I've learned: if you're doing a creative thing just for fun and happiness, then great. It doesn't matter if you finish it or anyone else ever sees it, because it's just for fun and to make you happy. But if you do it for any other reason—like sharing it with others or for work or to get famous—then at some point, for some period of time, it's not going to be fun and it's not going to make you happy.

Sometimes, this blog isn't that fun to keep up and it doesn't make me that happy. There are days when I think it would make me much happier if I only wrote posts when I felt like it. If I wrote only when I was feeling it, sometimes posts would be only a few days apart, but sometimes they would be weeks, months, or even years apart. I keep posting regularly because I feel like the blog is adding something to the world. And I want to tell my own story. Also, when you work in the writing field, it's good to give yourself deadlines and then follow up on them. It builds discipline and perseverance, which is very useful since writing is largely self-directed.

I think it would be great for Little Brother to someday be an idea guy like Walt Disney or Jim Henson. He could bounce from idea to idea and discipline to discipline because people would be willing to invest in his ideas. However, most of us will never be idea people. To get anywhere, we'll just have to keep pushing.