Last night I had someone come up to me and say he didn’t know I was a good writer. After a moment of confusion and trying to decide whether there was a hint of sarcasm, I said thank you. He had read this article which were my thoughts on the Broad St Run Lottery. To briefly summarize the post, I took a stance that there should be a time ceiling that every participant should have to be under to run the race. To any casual runner, this would be a particularly douchey stance. Combining the fact that every single runner I know who wanted to get into the Broad St run did, I barely regret writing the post. My opinions for that post stemmed from the chance that I do not get into the run. The reason I give this backdrop is because I could sense the person was aware of my particular stance as we talked for a couple minutes. Almost like he didn’t want to upset me because he regards me as a runner with an opinion. It was the first time in my entire blogging career that someone’s opinion of me was altered due to reading my blog. I have mixed thoughts.
I want people to know me for actually knowing me in person and not knowing me from reading my posts. I know this is an impossibility but allow me to explain my concern. When I write that post on the Broad St Lottery I’m taking an opinionated stance. For whatever reason, I was taught that if you are going to argue a point, argue 100%. Even though I write my exact thoughts for a particular post, also consider that I write for an audience sake and that everything in my posts isn’t 100% how I think. It’s probably closer to 95%. I don’t want people forming an opinion of me from my blog because I’m deeper than my posts. I have the ability to think, adapt, change, evolve and things that are put in a post, aren’t gospel.
The thing that I liked about the conversation with this is person is that he was talking to me like I cared about running. That makes me feel good because I do. I’m not a regional runner but I’m also not your average schlep. He was speaking to me with the understanding that I put a lot of time into staying in shape and taking running seriously. He formulates that opinion based on my blog and knowing me from races. It was nice to see that someone could sense my dedication but I don’t want it to be like I take running that seriously. I take it seriously for myself, but to each their own. I don’t create opinions on people based on their times. Running just doesn’t mean that much.
I rarely write anything with the thought in mind that it will have impact. You can develop a following if you want to participate in a particular area. I’m sort of half way. I have thoughts but I don’t really care enough to stand behind them or share them. It’s weird to think that things that I write in this blog can be brought up in conversations with me. It hasn’t happened often and this was my first experience and my thoughts on how I think about it.
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