Grading yourself

One of my favorite reads is Derek Sivers' daily ponderings. He always poses a thought-evoking question or subject and I can't help but take a look at how I view the matter. And instead of writing a lengthy comment there, I answer here.

Yesterday's question was How do you grade yourself?
It got quite some responses - as always.

This is what I would say for myself:
- how many lives do I change for the better, even for a moment, with whatever I am doing. Creating a positive effect whereby their mood will raise for any length of time.

You know, bringing up somebody who is sad, angry or just bored, lift up somebody even higher who is anyway high spirit. This is pretty much an essential part of an artist's job. I would say it's a duty to bring people up and not down.

And this I can measure by the various responses I get: a smile, a thank you, a few words of feedback and such.

However, often it is not easy: how do you count all the sparkling eyes at a concert? Or when you just walk in the street and somebody smiles back at you?



So from my profession, I also have to be more practical on this and look at dry facts, like statistics on my web places, media appearances, CDs or downloads sold and such.

And in order to achieve good numbers in these, the point is not to concentrate on these figures (which would be called pushing the statistics and that just doesn't work), but creating and sharing stuff that can do any good to someone else: a song, a video, a photo, a poem, an article, a gift item, showing a book, a product or other piece of info to people that can help them or make their lives better in some way.

And what's your measure?

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Photo: Darren Hester

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