On This Blog – A new vision for the new year

In preparation for a few moves we’re going to make to massively publicize this blog (and our venture) to college students, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I can best use this blog to help people.

To some extent, this brings me to the same dilemma many writers (not just bloggers) face – how to best strike the balance between writing for myself and writing for my audience? And who is my audience anyway?

Make no mistake, I write this blog partly for myself.

The fact is, nearly everything I’m “doing with my life” right now is high risk, and repeated “failure” is virtually guaranteed. Any returns that might come will come much later, way down the line, at least from the perspective of “achievement.”

Truthfully, I don’t really view it this way – I see the journey as the greatest reward.

But I won’t lie, I do care about “success” to some degree, and to the extent that “success” means helping people realize their potential, I care immensely. I’ve pretty much staked my life on it.

And I’m fine with all this. After all, I chose it. And in the long run, I think of myself as pretty much unemployable (in terms of holding a 9 to 5), and I like to at least pretend that I thrive and grow best under enormous do-or-die pressure.

But know that when I say that I write this blog partly for myself, I don’t just mean I write in a style that appeals to me. It goes way deeper than that.

This blog does nothing short of keep me sane, and it serves as an anchor for me in a highly unstable life. Seeing my words on the screen, and knowing that somebody gets something out of those words – that’s incredibly meaningful to me, and it’s about the only instant gratification that comes my way these days. For these reasons, I treat any comments I get from you readers as nothing short of soul food.

But at the same time, I make a very conscious effort to write with my readers in mind. When I tell a personal story, I try to draw out what I see to be important insights, and if I don’t outright say it, I try to place emphasis or hint at things to achieve the same effect.

Still, I recognize that so far, this blog has been pretty long-winded (among other things) and therefore may not be optimally effective in helping many of the people I most urgently want to help.

With this in mind, expect to see some pretty substantial changes to this blog in the coming month or so.

My team and I (shoutout to Hari and Colin for their invaluable role in envisioning the future of this blog) will be introducing several new features, both format-wise and content-wise:

Expect there to be more opportunity for you to directly contribute to it – for it to be much more interactive.

Expect that to some extent we’ll be “going commercial” and packaging the content in much more concise ways – ways that might make it more manageable for someone struggling with depression to use it.

Expect that there will be much more material directly relevant to someone struggling with depression.

Above all, we truly hope to offer real value to those who struggle with depression, but of course we hope that everyone who reads it will gain something from it.

For those of you who like the style and content of the blog as it is right now, have no fear! I’m not going anywhere with the long personal entries – they just might be moved to a separate section of the blog. Don’t drop out on me!

The fact is, even if you all abandoned me, I’d probably still keep writing those kinds of entries, if only because it’s a good habit for a writer to keep – it’s good practice.

Anyway, this was just a heads up – the truth is, even we don’t really know how this blog will evolve in the future.

So keep reading, and give me a shout every once in a while to let me know how I'm doing!

-David

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