Blogging heroes

I’ve been enjoying the book  ’Blogging Heroes‘  by Michael A. Banks, but one paragraph made me stop and think about myself.

Michael was interviewing Mark Frauefelder of the BoingBoing blog. Mark described his interest in ’700 Hobo Names’ by John Hodgman, and how putting it on his blog had triggered the 700 Hoboes Project. Here’s the bit that worried me (and it’s good to be worried occasionally):

Seeing that just makes me feel happy to know that I was in some way responsible for it – for inspiring all these really talented people to get together online.

My immediate thoughts were: “I don’t usually think like that but I’m glad Mark does, and I wish I did. Why don’t I?”

You see most of the time I’m pretty self-centred, and even when I’m doing things for reasons I admire my motives are always mixed. People saying the sort of thing Mark says makes me feel bad about myself, so if I’m already in a depressed phase it makes me feel worse. I start to dwell on all the other ways in which I’m self-centred, and all the times my motives were almost entirely ones I dislike.

But then again I have no idea how much of Mark’s happiness is generated by knowing he’s helped a load of people, and how much is because it’s boosted his own success. My guess is he’s as human as me, so feels both.  Maybe I should be less hard on myself. Maybe I should be pleased that there’s even a bit of my motivation that’s not selfish, that there’s at least the seed of me being the type of person I’d rather be.  Maybe I should think of myself more as a work in progress.

Does anyone else have these kind of thoughts?

By the way, the book’s great. Every chapter is different, reflecting the personalities of the thirty successful bloggers interviewed. If people or blogging interest you then give this book a try.

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