Today I found myself yearning for instant gratification and feedback. I’d been brave and dived into the template code to add the “subscribe by email” link in the header. You probably didn’t notice that it wasn’t there yesterday, but it wasn’t.  After nudging it around a little so that it fit in with the other header links I found myself really wanting a hundred people to instantly show up and use it.

They probably will over time but when? I have no way of knowing and that leaves me uncertain that it was even worth doing. It’s not hard to find people placing the blame for the need for instant gratification on the fault of the new millennium, new technology, too much money or what have you.  I think it has more to do with the speed of change and the confidence that comes with repetition.  Growing a garden is never the same thing twice, but after you’ve done it awhile you have a general sense of the sequence of things; approximately how long before you can claim the seeds will not sprout and will need to be replanted or whether it’s realistic to pull a test carrot to see what’s up under  ground.  But you don’t know any of that the first time you try it. Probably in a year from now if I were to do this again I wouldn’t even blink until a month(?) had passed, but by then if I were to start a new website all the other variables are likely to have changed significantly.

So much of our lives now are spent on ‘first times’ from blogging and social networking media to new cell phones with new buttons and beyond.  I love the constantly changing modern world as much as the next person although I admit I wouldn’t mind some of the confidence that comes from repeating an experience occasionally.  I take a certain amount of comfort in knowing that nobody else really knows the answer either.  They hand out their best guess and advice but if they’re really making an effort they’re as uncertain of the outcome as the rest of us. At least that levels the playing field and we all have the same chance to become experts!

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