Passion vs. Motivation

I was thinking earlier today about my speaking engagement this fall at IAAPA, and how long I want to stay, and what I want to do in terms of covering the show. I haven't covered the show in earnest for CoasterBuzz for a couple of years. The last time was more to keep in touch with people than it was for any real journalistic intent.

I've made countless comments over the last few years about how I wasn't motivated to improve and rewrite the site, but when I really think hard about it, it's not an issue of motivation, but rather passion.

Back in 2000, I was very passionate about CoasterBuzz. Guide to The Point (now PointBuzz) had taken off in two years, I was working in an exciting dotcom segment of a big media company and I thought that Millennium Force was second only to sex as far as physical pleasure goes. I spun up that site and its traffic very, very quickly. Using various metrics, it became arguably one of the most visited coaster sites on the Net, and I was hell bent on keeping it that way. And hey, I was making a little money too. A four-digit monthly income, in fact, in the first year.

Seven years later, I don't care so much how it ranks in terms of traffic as much as I care that it still provides entertainment value for me, and continues to generate revenue. The passion has waned. I figure that's the real reason I'm so slow in rebuilding it. There are so many other things in my life that are more important now.

It's not that I don't care anymore, because it will get rebuilt. I actually find myself more interested in working with Walt to improve PointBuzz these days, which will reach an amazing ten year anniversary next year. I'm not even sure how many millions of visits that site has logged at this point. Even though I've assumed more of a code monkey role and less of a content generation role, I'm still very proud of what it has become.

I do have passion for starting something new, I just don't know what. The truth is that I have different criteria for success now, much of it financial, and I know that I can't simply beat others to market with something fresh the way I did for CoasterBuzz in 2000. It's a different world now. As much as I find it OK to fail at certain things in life, I'd rather not.

It's easy to look at that and say, "Well, it sounds like you're too focused on the dollar." That's a fair thing to say, but part of what makes it fun now is the almost absurd notion that I can make money doing something I like. That's a bit of a game itself, and without it, I wouldn't be traveling or buying iPhones or whatever. If you would've asked me if I'd ever have a Universal pass and go there several times a year back in 2000, I would've told you that was crazy talk.

What I lack is the vision of people making really useful stuff on the Web these days. I still think in some cases it's just people who got lucky, but it's really hard to fill a need that isn't currently being addressed. My focus on niche markets yields the same ideas of community over and over, and the Web is saturated with those ideas already.

Right now my passions are for trying wine, cooking, playing with the Wii, reading for pleasure, star gazing from the hot tub, and of course, a very sweet redhead I met a couple of months ago. I need a break from the Internet (really hard when you work for a dotcom).