In the spirit of the season, thank you to all the readers of this blog (and those that listen to my podcast as well). To claim that I write or record purely out of a desire to give wouldn’t be correct. The truth is, doing both helps me as least as much as it helps my audience.
In the vein of gratitude, I want to highlight a few things about the blog (and podcast) that I am grateful for in those that choose to read and listen. I do not claim to have the biggest audience in the sport of swimming, far from it. I do, however, have the best audience. In thanking all of you, I am once again being slightly self-serving. Saying thank you reminds me of why I do these things in the first place.
Deep Waters
I’ve been producing “content” online since before the term “content” even existed. As such, I’ve witnessed an inexorable march of what is available to consume. There is far more out there than there used to be. To all of you, thank you for understanding a simple truth:
Though there is more to look at than ever before, the volume of valuable information remains virtually constant.
What has driven popularity in most of these spaces is consistency and the ability to generate hype (negative better than positive). That is, if you can be a high volume “content creator” for a platform, you will generally be rewarded, and if you can trigger people with what you post that also works.
The feedback I get from you, the reader, betrays a depth of thought that I never see in high volume online content. High volume content is designed to be thought provoking in only the most superficial sense. Content that generates the kind of long form, thoughtful responses that I get is not popular.
I’m grateful because the level of satisfaction I get from one reader of this blog reaching out to me outweighs millions of “likes” or one sentence comments on a post. That’s not hyperbole, it’s like decide what outputs more heat, the sun or a match. One burns out quickly, the other one is almost beyond measure.
In a world where it can be easy to chase false success, I’m grateful for you supporting me taking a slower route.
A respect for Coaching
While most of my audience is coaches, I know that some of you are, well, not coaches. There are athletes and parents in the mix.
What I see as a common theme through all is a respect for the profession of coaching, something that is all too limited in supply these days. While I find myself always wanting to improve the culture of the sport, at it’s core coaching is a noble profession filled with wildly overqualified people.
Thank you for understanding that coaching goes way beyond wins, losses and your best time in the 200 free. More than anything it’s about a process of personal development. We all achieve our best when someone else is willing to challenge our assumptions and offer us a different path forward.
Simple Thanks
Thank you for the simple act of reading, or listening. I gather I would enjoy writing regardless of whether anyone read what I wrote. But whenever I run into someone who has read something, somewhere, it makes my day.
The fact that I can walk into a random meet and someone feels that, on some level, they know me is not something I take for granted. The people that I meet in this context are only a small fraction of those that read. I know for myself, I’m incredible at lurking in spaces online, just silently taking it all in and never would reach out to the person on the other side.
But just knowing that there are people out there means I always feel the potential interaction.
Thank you to everyone, and have a wonderful Thanksgiving.