Worth It

…if it entertains just one person, inspires one other human to keep the spark alive… maybe it was.

We’ve all done it. We all should do it, at least occasionally. I do it ever few months, in fact.

I Googled myself.

For years, the result has been a modest list of links, many to my own websites, but often to a variety of articles from old jobs and public feeds from old accounts. It’s been a trip down memory lane.

When I Googled myself the other day, though: I was greeted with an AI summary of my digital footprint, and a generated outline of who the search algorithm thought I was as a person.

It wasn’t completely wrong, but it wasn’t a hundred percent accurate, either.

As a guy who spends his free time in the pursuit of creative public expression I gotta admit: I’m a little frustrated that all the work I’ve put into building profile and connections online in the last twenty years has amounted to a couple paragraphs in an LLM.

Search and social, after all, were the bridges between the stuff I was putting out there and the rest of the universe—but lately, not too many people are crossing it.

“Keep making stuff.” I tell myself. “People will find it. And if it entertains just one person, inspires one other human to keep the spark alive… maybe it was worth it. Right?”

This is a cross post from Of Poets & Processors.

Brad Salomons is a time traveller and intergalactic secret agent for hire. He writes blogs about technology, creativity and life between gigs.