Sunday, March 16, 2008

Feedback and Gratitude

Two days ago I posted a request to hear from whoever might be reading this, and I got a great response from someone who had appreciated what I had written (Thanks, you know who you are!).

There's nothing quite as nice as getting positive feedback.
It reminds me of a common theme about which I've written: you won't get positive feedback unless you make something that you share with others. And that certainly makes all the effort more worthwhile.

It wasn't easy to get someone to give me positive feedback on my blog. Over the course of slightly over a year, and over 100 posts, most of them several paragraphs long, few of them very short, two people have taken the time to say nice things. And I don't really consider that a bad investment--because if I hadn't put my ideas on the page and risked the rejection involved in putting my words out for public consumption, neither of those two people would have given me any positive feedback.

Ok, sure, maybe the people who contacted me are easier to please than your faculty committee. That only changes the weights of the factors in the equation; it doesn't change the basic dynamic, which is that you can't get feedback unless you do the work and risk the rejection.

Where does gratitude come into this? Only in my gratitude for the people who gave me positive feedback. Putting your work out there, gives you an opportunity to get feedback, which creates an opportunity to have something to be grateful for.

No comments: