🌮 On Sharing

I’m not a natural sharer.

In all aspects of my life I am an independent, guarded, private, close to the chest introvert. I don’t like people looking at my computer screen while I’m doing stuff. I don’t like people asking me what I’m doing. I don’t even like when my wife turns in her chair when I get up to get some water.

Leave me alone. Let me be. Don’t notice me.

This probably sounds pretty extreme to you, but I’m not normal, so there you go. Maybe you can relate to at least some of that.

Anyway, all that to say, I don’t share. At least not well. I’m working on it. So how do I work on it if I’m all of those things?

The one thing that helps me get up and share things - write emails like this, get on BlueSky, post on Facebook, etc. is the knowledge that there are other Mikes roaming this Earth. Or, at least other people like me who like some of the same things I do.

And if I think something is cool, they will too. The trick is to train your brain to think “that’s cool, I should tell others!” because let me tell you, that is NOT my first instinct, ever.

My wife (the same one from earlier) LOVES to share. Sends me heaps of Instagram reels. Tells me what’s happening at her job, with her mom, in her book, with the cat. Everything. It’s…a lot.

But it made me realize that people like hearing from me, especially the people who are interested in the same stuff as me. And so I’m growing an audience here, on social, everywhere.

This sharing thing has another advantage as well. If you’re one of those people who is trying to grow your own audience online and you think “I don’t have anything cool to talk about,” training your brain to share cool stuff will help you develop the habit of looking for and talking about things in your own context.

I promise you, all that stuff that you’re currently internalizing and forgetting is great fodder for content.*

*I hate the word “content” because it feels so impersonal, but this does work. Train yourself to share and you will notice more cool stuff to share than ever before.

Do you have something cool to share? Let me know!

PS. Yep, I’m an only child. How’d you guess?