Who’s Reading, Who’s Not, and Why I Don’t Take It Personally

When I first started publishing my stories, I noticed who read them. But if I’m completely truthful, I probably noticed who didn’t read them even more, especially my friends and family. I had written something that mattered to me, spent hours thinking about it, writing it, rewriting it, changing a word here, moving a paragraph there, reading it one more time before finally hitting publish. Then I would send this little piece of myself out into the world, and some of the people closest to me wouldn’t read it.

Most of them didn’t, actually.

That was confusing in the beginning, and sometimes it hurt. I tried to make sense of it, which meant I did what most of us do when we don’t have enough information. I made up stories. Maybe my writing wasn’t very good. Maybe they weren’t interested in what I had to say. Maybe they didn’t support me. Maybe they didn’t like me as much as I thought they did. I didn’t have any actual information, of course, but that didn’t stop me. Apparently, if nobody supplied an explanation, I was perfectly capable of writing one myself, and because I’m a writer, I could make it pretty convincing.

The funny thing is, I still don’t know why some of the people I love rarely read what I write. Maybe they’re busy. Maybe personal essays aren’t their thing. Maybe they intend to read them later and forget. Maybe they simply aren’t that interested. Maybe they don’t particularly like my writing. That last possibility used to make my stomach turn over a little. Now I can say it without feeling like I need to explain myself or defend my work.

What I finally figured out is that I don’t need to know.

That was a much bigger realization for me than simply deciding not to care, because I do care. When someone reads something I’ve written and tells me what it meant to her, I love that. When it’s someone I care about, it means even more. I’m grateful that anyone takes time out of their own life to spend a few minutes with my words. But I no longer need that response in order to decide whether the writing was worth doing.

Every now and then I still feel a little ping. Someone close to me doesn’t respond to something that mattered a lot to me, and a question will wander through my head. I wonder why she never reads my writing. The difference now is that I don’t have to chase the question. I don’t have to turn it into an investigation about the quality of my writing, the strength of the relationship, or my own worth. I can let the question be a question.

Social media has taught me some other things too, and one of them is harder for me to admit.

When Facebook first became part of our lives, I sometimes caught myself judging other women.

There. I said it…and it wasn’t easy.

That feels very vulnerable because supporting women has always been important to me. I have long believed that women need other women who will encourage them, stand beside them, celebrate them, and make room for them to become more fully themselves. So when I noticed myself scrolling past another woman’s post and making some little judgment in my head about what she was wearing, what she was saying, how she was showing up, or what she seemed to be trying to prove, I didn’t like what I saw in myself.

I had to correct it.

Not because I wanted to pretend I never had judgmental thoughts. I’m human. They still pop up every now and then. But I decided I did not want to be that woman. I did not want to contribute to the very thing I said I wanted women to be free from.

So I started paying closer attention.

When I see a woman taking a risk, sharing her work, changing her life, trying something new, showing herself more honestly, starting a business, losing weight, gaining confidence, speaking up, dressing differently, putting herself out there in some way, I assume she is doing the best she can and becoming more of who she is.

I may not know her well. She may be a friend of a friend, a distant relative, someone I knew years ago, or somebody I know mostly through social media. I don’t know everything about her life, and I certainly don’t know what it took for her to post what she posted.

So why would I make up a negative story about her?

That question changed something for me.

I would rather be the woman who encourages.

I would rather click the heart.

I would rather say, “Good for you.”

I would rather recognize that maybe posting that photo, announcing that business, sharing that opinion, telling that story, or showing up in a new way took more courage than I can see from my side of the screen.

That doesn’t mean I support everything every woman does simply because she is a woman. Of course not. There are values, behaviors, and choices I don’t agree with. But when I don’t know otherwise, I choose to assume something generous before I assume something unkind.

That is partly because I know what it feels like to put yourself out there.

I know what it feels like to write something deeply personal and wonder whether anyone will read it. I know what it feels like to start something new and hope the people who know you will support it. I know what it feels like to risk being seen and then hear very little back.

And social media has made me realize that if I want support, encouragement, and generosity from others, I need to practice them myself.

I need to practice what I preach.

That has become especially important as my own work has grown. I use social media to share my writing, my business, my ideas, and parts of my own life. I pay attention to what happens there because it is part of my work, but it is also a place where I keep learning about myself. Every once in a while, an old judgment will still pop into my head, and I’ll catch it.

Nope. You’re not that woman.

And then I make a different choice.

I support her genuinely.

Somewhere along the way, all of this also changed my relationship with my own writing. I stopped seeing writing as something I did in exchange for attention. Writing feeds me. It helps me understand the life I’ve lived. It brings back memories I thought I’d forgotten. Sometimes I sit down thinking I know what I want to say, only to discover halfway through that the story is actually about something else.

And sometimes the words seem to come from somewhere beyond me.

I believe they come from GUS (God, Universe, Spirit).

I don’t mean that God is sitting somewhere dictating my blogs. I mean that there are times when an idea arrives, a memory suddenly returns, or words begin forming in my head in a way that feels larger than me. I have learned to pay attention when that happens.

Writing feels like part of my purpose.

I’m not even sure I could stop if I wanted to.

And once I understood that, I stopped needing every story to perform.

Some things I write are read by a lot of people. Some aren’t. Some receive comments and messages. Others float silently out into the world. But every once in a while, someone I don’t know very well, or sometimes don’t know at all, sends me a message and says, “I needed this today,” or “I thought I was the only one,” or “This made me think about my mother.”

Those messages have taught me something that likes and comments never could.

We really don’t know where our stories go.

We measure what comes back to us because that’s what we can see. But I suspect much of the impact of anything we create happens where we will never know about it. Someone may read something I wrote about my sister Kelly and think differently about someone they love who struggles with addiction. Someone may read something I’ve written about death and finally have the conversation they’ve been avoiding. Someone may read one of my silly childhood stories and suddenly remember something about her own grandmother. Someone may read a story about writing stories and finally sit down and write one of her own.

I may never know.

And I’m okay with that now.

I have also learned that our friends and family are not automatically our audience simply because they love us. That one took me a while. They get to have their own interests, their own lives, and their own choices about what they want to read. Their job is not to prove they love me by reading everything I write, just as my job is not to stand at the edge of the arena checking to see who showed up.

Sometimes you just have to put the blinders on.

I grew up around horses, so I understand the point of blinders. They keep the horse from being distracted by everything happening beside and behind it. The horse can pay attention to where it’s going.

That image makes more sense to me now than it ever did when I was young.

Stop looking sideways to see who noticed.

Stop counting who clapped.

Stop deciding that somebody else’s silence means something when you have absolutely no idea what it means.

Keep looking where you’re going.

And write.

So, what if nobody cares about your story?

Somebody probably will. I have learned that too.

But I don’t think that is the most important answer anymore.

Write it because writing something true changes you before anyone else ever reads it. Write it because something in you keeps bringing the story back. Write it because creating something feeds you. Write it because there are pieces of your life worth putting into words even if nobody ever clicks a little heart underneath them.

And yes, if your story reaches one person and makes her laugh, remember something, feel less alone, call someone she loves, forgive herself, or simply stop and think for a minute, that is a pretty wonderful thing.

But maybe the first person who needs to care about your story is you.

Then put the blinders on and write the next one.

Love is All there is.

Diana