Relative Obscurity

On creating for me in a world that rewards attention

I thought I wanted to be famous. I started aspirationally like any child would. An astronaut, an athlete, a politician. I wanted to see my name in the New York Times, plastered across ESPN, or on the Forbes 40 Under 40. I’m still holding out hope.

As I settled into my professional career, I adjusted my expectations. I wanted to be known as a good planner. Maybe I wouldn’t be published in the New York Times. I could settle for The Journal of Financial Planning (though arguably, it’s still getting published). But I still wanted name recognition at conferences. Followers on LinkedIn.

If I wasn’t getting likes on posts or requests for coffee chats, what did I have to offer my industry? Could I call myself successful?

I remember seeing Randy Johnson (the pitcher) at Disneyland as a kid. He was eating pancakes with his family. And I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. There he was, a real major league baseball pitcher sitting not two tables over with his family. I scooted my chair as close to his table as I could hoping some of his overflowing aura would rub off on me. I assumed everyone in that restaurant that morning felt the same.

While I narrowed my own expectations of what fame would entail, I’m not entirely sure I’ve ever truly let go of the idea that to be known is to have made it. I needed a widget people wanted. Every time I asked myself what success looked like, I could point to my resume and my body of work would speak for itself.

I recorded my first podcast episode this year. I felt like I was taking another step toward making it. I had a platform to share my perspective and ideas. And one of the first comments (from someone I admire) read “I didn’t know you were the Art of Wandering guy.” My interpretation, “I’m still nobody.” Why am I writing if no one knows who I am? Maybe I need a tighter message to generate more views and better branding that increases the surface area for connection. Could I grow my business more quickly if I used my subscriber list to convert clients? If I hammered the algorithm with content? I just wanted to feel the way I assumed Randy Johnson felt that morning in Disneyland. A real life hero.

I’ve never questioned my desire to be known until recently. I’ve been asking myself why I write at all. Is it for the hope of fame or to create a platform? I couldn’t be sure. But those ends felt suffocating. The old saying goes, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? In today’s day and age, if I don’t post my run on Strava, market on Linkedin, or post about my travel on Instagram, am I even living? To live publicly scratches my deepest itch to be known, and yet, I want to be offline living my authentic life more than ever. I know if I post three times a day, the algorithm tells me I will get the attention. I will be seen. But I know it will just ask me for more, and more, and more. These are the metrics I found impossible to let go because I feared fading into irrelevant, unproductive, obscurity.

If I walk down a busy downtown street on the way to work, who would I recognize? I’d pass someone with a net worth I’d always aspired to achieve. I’d brush shoulders with an amateur podcaster, an artist, a retired athlete. I could lock eyes with a local politician, an influencer, or an author. I might stand behind a cancer survivor or a widow in line for coffee. And they would all be strangers to me. And me too them. I’m too wrapped up in trying to be myself. Despite every desire to be known, we are mostly just strangers. Why then, do I expect or need someone to go out of their way and ask me if I am the Art of Wandering guy?

Social media tells us it’s a connection engine. But if the currency for connection is valued solely on likes, views, and interactions, am I meeting what I thought was my most basic desire to be known? I don’t want attention. I want to be deeply connected. How can I compare two thousand views to a text that says “are you reading my journal?!” One feels like becoming known. The other is being deeply seen. How can I be known unless you truly know me?

If I strip away my desire to be recognized, maybe I don’t want to be famous. Fame demands a plan. I don’t want to pay the price that the algorithm demands to get attention. I am not rewarded for going on a walk, or journaling to myself, or closing my laptop to call a friend.

Maybe what I want is to be relatively obscure. A community creator. A permission giver. Not someone that needs to be amplified by the world’s most powerful satellite but findable in the smallest corners. Obscurity gives me the freedom to create without having all the answers. What will get read and what I want to write might be two different things. I might never be famous. I might never get recognized at breakfast or as I walk down the street. But I’ll still be writing, quietly, in my own little corner.