I'll Stop Hitting Myself Now

The biggest struggle I've been having lately is marketing. It's my least favorite activity, especially when it comes to work I am doing. I like to let whatever I am producing speak for itself. Encapsulating this, the Tao Te Ching has a really great way to think about it.

"The Master doesn’t talk, he acts. When his work is done, the people say, “Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!”" — Lao Tzu, Gia-Fu Feng, Jane English, Toinette Lippe, Jacob Needleman, 道德經 (Dao De Jing / Tao Te Ching) (-600)

Thinking this through I keep circling back on myself for days at a time. Why should anything I am working on need a dedicated place to advertise it? If what I am doing is not getting attention, is something wrong with it? Why is no one responding to my post on Instagram?

I don't think I'll ever know the answer to those questions. So the best I can do right now is stop doing the activity causing the stress to my brain. Ben McKenzie writes about this from a slightly different perspective. Fighting against your own nature only benefits you if your nature is blocking the path. That's my take. He's talking about calling crypto a currency in his book Easy Money and by all accounts it isn't even a real asset. This quote encapsulates that well:

"You could call a brick a soccer ball, but I wouldn’t recommend using it that way" — Ben McKenzie, Jacob Silverman, Easy Money

Fighting against my nature in this way is a reflexive slap in the face. I'll stop hitting myself now. Investing time into what I truly enjoy doing: Building relationships, writing a post in Adversaria, thinking my way through the negative emotion, taking a walk with my dog. All of these things have benefits attached that are not only physically present at the end, but emotionally relaxing during the effort.

Yeah, that seems to be the right way to approach this thing.