Today wordpress told me I have reached 200 likes in a new secret blog I’ve recently started (ping me if you want to know about it, I may or may not share with you 🙂 and so I went back to see the stats of this legacy one.

When I started in 2013, I dedicated most time and effort into almost 60 posts meaning I wrote more than once a week! I had 1600 visitors generating almost 4500 views…Over the next 4 years, I wrote barely once a quarter so the total views were only around 2500. My point though wasn’t the numbers at all…but the fact that real people do drop by from time to time to consume content I put out there. Recently several things has got me thinking about the whole idea of being responsible for your content, platform.

To the furthest extent, how do you make sure the content you put out there is correct (not fake news) factually and even politically and culturally? How do you present an idea when right or wrong is not always 100% clear and agreed upon? With a personal blog, of course I can be biased and put up whatever bullshit I come up with, but with a platform with massive influence… indeed with greater power comes greater responsibility.

This brings me to two incidents that I’ve only just recently connected. The first happened in 2013, mid way through my Europe exchange, I received a comment, then message from a girl of Islamic cultures (in her profile picture she had a hijab on). She was probably in high school at the time; somehow because I am this petite Asian girl barely reaching 1.6m, she was inspired by the way I tromped the continent with just a backpack sleeping in airports, catching midnight buses and planes with no internet while keeping myself in one piece. She told me that I made her believe in herself, that she too can explore the world when she have the chance. It was never my intention to do anything remotely close to inspiring people with my little space here. It started when I wanted to share the most authentic feelings and excitement I have being in Europe for the first time, without repeating myself over and over again to my mom, my aunt, my cousin, my friends etc. So my first takeaway is whether intentional or not, you are responsible for the people you’ve touched or inspired. It is a special bonding like no other, even more precious because it means we are bypassing the limitation of physical contact, not letting that hinders our ability to connect with others through merely a thought, an idea, big or small.

The second incident happened during my second exchange, also 2013 (what a year right!). I submitted my poem to the school literary magazine for the first time in my life and a few weeks later, received a facebook message from Nicole-

It may not be entirely relevant, but I want to end the post with a personal inspiration moment. I was in an internal training where the founder of a US Game company shared about his friend, who was, at the time, an app developer who writes code for their games. He is passionate in writing, but never seemed to get enough interests from publishers. Instead of just giving up and tossing it under his bed, he has decided to release chapter by chapter online, circling the contents amongst his friends so they can give him feedback. The most common one he got was how much they enjoy when the protagonist solve problems in a scientific manner. So he gave his protagonist more and more obstacles to solve. As he improves his storyline, he gained more and more readers until eventually, he drawn the attention of book publishers. You’ve probably heard of this poor protagonist, Mark Whatney, who was also played by Matt Damon.. in the movie adaptation of (one of) my all time favorite book, the Martian written by Andy Weir. The book that made me miss my train stop twice because I was captivated by the plot. I found strength in Mark when he relentlessly pick himself up failure after failure, with one clear goal in mind: to solve whatever problem that came in his way. If it were me personally, I’d probably gave up living on Mars by myself by the first month. But no, it was persistence and the belief that there are more solutions than problems that got him through. Because no matter how tiny are the steps you made, as long as it is in the right direction, you will eventually get there. Mark’s story reminded me of this quote I read off a chalkboard sometime ago “It is always too early to quit.”

So please stay tuned, my plan is to publish a book in 20 years’ time 🙂