Small and awesome

Rian recently wrote a great post titled “Being” which speaks to a couple things I’m experiencing these days. One of the themes he touches on is the positive side of smallness. One aspect he writes about is the size of your online social network:

All of this to say that we’ll do well to remember that the web is people all the way down. And that smaller networks mean more meaningful relationships.

… and being a small fish in a big pond:

When I lived in South Africa I thought what I wanted was to become an author and conference speaker. It was a bit easier there because there aren’t as many UX people as there are elsewhere in the world. And when I decided to move back to the US several people didn’t understand. “You’ll be a small fish in a big pond,” they said. “I know,” I would answer, “isn’t that awesome?”

The small fish bit appeals to me at this point in my life. Working to be the big fish is exhausting and there is always a younger, more energetic fish swimming further and faster. Just keeping up becomes a very unhealthy obsession. I think Rian has the right idea about this (and other aspects of being).

Go read his post.