Immediate Gratification

The very young woman who tries to teach me how to use social media to market my books explained something to me that I knew but didn’t comprehend.

She said that those who I am trying to reach by using Facebook, Twitter, and the like, have very short attention spans. I shouldn’t take anything personal, but I had to appeal to the immediate and the short term view of life. She explained that her generation needs to be reminded over and over before things sink in. I needed to think differently in order to reach this audience.

Regardless of whether “her generation” is or isn’t an audience for my books, I learned from this discourse because it is not just her generation that takes a short term view of life. I am as guilty of the next of seeking immediate pleasure and gratification over the long term. I have been known to say that at times I enjoy the night without regard to the morning after. I am also not sure I have improved much with age, substituting a grasshopper mentality to the same thing just a different-rationale — I haven’t got much time left so enjoy while I can.

Perhaps it is I who needs to think differently. I need to look through the short term to what lies beyond it, for morning always comes.