Signals of Interest

When was the last time you received a signal that you were worth people’s attention?

I think much of my life has been spent thinking about this question.

Personal examples

When Dean Allen released Textpattern in 2004, there was an aspect of it that I could tell people weren’t understanding clearly, so I wrote Textpattern Semantics to try and clear it up. It earned me some direct praise from Dean himself, and people found it so helpful that volunteers translated it into several languages. It’s fishwrap now, but I’m still chasing the high of someone telling me, “Thanks for explaining that so well — I get it now.”

A less positive example: when I was young I was an evangelical Christian. One of the underrated benefits of being male in a patriarchal system is that if you are at all literate (or even simply outspoken), people assume worth listening to. People will put you in front of actual pulpits and take notes on what you say. To walk into a fundamentalist church as a male is to be bathed in recognition — not just of your “leadership” status as a penis-haver, but that you are a conduit of ideas that deserve an audience. It’s hard for some people to give that up, even when they become able to see how undeserved it is.

I’m still always on the lookout for that signal of interest, but I also need to know that it’s sincere and deserved. You can sort of see it in the way I changed How I license.