Admitting I have much to learn

 What I know about working on cars I learned from watching and working with my Dad. What little bit I know about drawing I learned watching Dad and experimenting on my own over years and years of practice. I don't know all that much about drawing. What I know about writing I have learned by reading. Some of that reading over the past few years has been books on writing. 

Today, because of an eBay purchase, I realized that I have not been applying what I know about learning to several of my pursuits. This one was very specific to eBay, but it got me to thinking about several other things the lesson applied to. It all got started on the last blog post I wrote about these dice videos I am making. 

I wrote something about hoping I ran across my original collection of dice I carried in high school. My brain fist started processing where those likely ended up. I lost a few things along the way in life, as we all do. Those dice sets probably are in some landfill somewhere. I remember them. More importantly I remember the names of the sets: Stealth, Fire, Sea, Water, and Cobalt. 

Now, Chessex hasn't manufactured these sets in a few years. That is a good thing. I don't want new dice for those sets. I want the originals. I want dice that were made then. That was how I got to eBay. I was worried the dice were going to cost a fortune to get complete sets. 

Nope. I ordered two sets of Fire, one Sea, and one Water in just a few minutes of searching. I beat myself up for a few minutes about another dice impulse buy. Then I came up with a few ideas for videos for TikTok since my thing there seems to be about dice. I need to move away from buying mystery dice since I wouldn't watch that same old video too many times. Maybe other people will. 

I ordered last night. Today I get a super professional message sent on eBay about my dice being shipped. Now, I have sold quite a few things on eBay over the years. I never message my buyers unless there is a problem, and very likely I have been doing it wrong. Why had it never occurred to me to go above and beyond. 

Well, I am the C student of life on my very best day. Beyond that, I have treated eBay like this convenient outlet to make back a little money on the hobbies that I take interest in. Looking back at it that is 100% my failure with eBay. I try not to put that much effort into it. I have learned a few things in other areas of my life that have improved my eBay skills, but I haven't ever made a point to pursue getting better at eBay. 

That isn't the best decision I have ever made. I have had good and bad interactions as an eBay buyer. I have had some good and a few terrible interactions as a seller. Mostly the negative have discouraged me. I haven't learned a whole lot. I have not tried to. In fact, when I inevitably make an error and cause a bad interaction I often quit eBay for some time and blame it for being a frustrating system. 

It's me. Hi. I'm  the problem. It's me. 

This is one of my failures in life. The good things about failures, more so repeated ones, is that you can learn from them. eBay isn't wrong, bad, or a problem. I like eBay. I like buying. I love selling. I just have to admit that I have arrogantly believed I could half-ass my eBay interactions and that would just be good enough. I didn't study the positive interactions I have had buying things. I didn't own my mistakes and make changes to improve. That is easy to fix. 

This is a lot bigger than eBay though. I must admit I am making a mistake as a blogger. Ask me how many blogs I subscribe to or read regularly. Ask me. I dare you. The answer is ZERO. How do I expect to be a great blogger when I don't study how great blogs are formatted and how they draw an audience? What is the secret sauce of success for a blogger? 

Now, you may refer back to any one of a dozen or so places where I say that I don't care about people reading my blog. That is something of a half truth. It is true that it is an attitude that I have adopted. Would I like for my blog to be well thought of, respected, and heavily trafficked? Would I like there to be enough of an audience that I earned money, even a very small amount, for writing? 

Let me be honest and vulnerable for a moment. I am scared of attracting the audience that would lead to even modest monetization. I worry about my words being misconstrued and used against me. I worry about me having wrote something that later comes back to bite me in the butt. I am afraid of controversy and I allow that to dull my shine. 

I clearly have a passion for writing. I don't know that I have a talent for it, but I am allowing my fears to stop me from doing anything with that passion. I am pretty sure that is the definition of committing a sin (which is properly defined as failing to live up to your potential rather than that whole bit about being naughty or whatever.) I don't think I will be the next Stephen King, but I do believe my ideas are good enough that they should see print. I admit here, for the first time honestly, that I haven't been putting serious work into writing my fiction based on fear and self-doubt. 

This isn't really about that though. eBaying is an example of me not applying my brain and experience. Blogging is a better one because I am trying to be good at something that I am not participating in. Wait! There are a couple of other examples too. 

Remember those podcasts I hosted, directed, collaborated on, edited, and released? Wanna guess how many podcasts I was actively listening to before during or after the time I was involved with a podcast? Zero. Not one. In fact, this one gets a little bit worse. I don't much care for podcasting as a format. I like audiobooks. I can deal with getting information from a podcast on a topic that I want to learn more about, but I don't particularly enjoy them in general. 

That means that my podcasting opinions were all based on theory and personal preference. Those preferences were made with zero experience of listening to actual podcasts, successful or otherwise. Let me translate. I made a bunch of arrogant, unresearched assumptions about what would work and stubbornly stuck to them. That never had success written on it. 

There is a line in the first Fast and Furious movie that says something like," You don't climb in the ring with Ali just because you think you box." I liked it enough that I have remembered it since the first time I saw that in theaters. It is a clever response. It is also pretty smart. Thinking you have a skill for something does not make you an expert. It helps to stand on the shoulders of giants by studying the masters of a particular forum. 

If I were going to try and make money on Twitch, I would totally make certain I was a hot girl preferably with a bikini and a hot tub. If I wanted to be the President I would work on being a person that has an unusual pattern of speaking, be able to talk out both sides of my mouth, and suspect that my chances at that office are increased greatly by the fact I am white and male. Being old seems to help too. I suspect there is more to all of that, by which I mean Twitch. I am fairly certain I could get the President thing down if only I had the other important thing: the willingness to whore myself out for money and power. Anyone who wants to hold a political office should by default be ineligible for it. Interest in politics is a sure sign of criminality and should be punished heavily. There is a difference between liking politics and wanted to work as a public servant in government. The enjoyment of one is hidden by a claim of wanting to do the other.

Stephen King warned me about this in On Writing. By this I mean not jumping into things without a certain level of knowledge and expertise and expect to be successful. He pointed out that in order to be a good writer you need to be a good reader. I have remembered that general advice much better than most nuggets of found (rather than experienced) wisdom. My little epiphany today proves that there is a difference between knowing something and applying the knowledge. Sorry, Wordsmith, I have failed you. 

Am I going to sit down today and find a dozen successful blogs to study? Probably not. I will Google the most successful blogs. Google may make a joke about the early 2000s calling and wanting their out of date forum back. I will still check out the results a little. I hope that the top blogs have been around a while. 

I will also probably try to find a few more things on eBay as I make purchases. That will let me sort through good and bad practices on the purchasing end of the transaction. I will pay attention to what I like. More importantly I will pay attention to what I don't like. I might do double duty on my research and try to find a successful blog about eBay. Expect me to throw in a few posts because that is what I do. 

I may even be open to listening to a few podcasts about how to be a better dungeon master. I might watch a few successful tiktok accounts to see what they are doing right. I just hope being a hot girl isn't a requirement. I could make the switch I suppose, but even then I am pretty sure my best bikini days are behind me.