TLDR: My ill-informed definition of ‘success’ as a creative has led me into a long spell of burnout. In the last few months, I’ve taken a step back to focus on who I am behind a screen.
I write a long-winded (but, I think, still interesting) breakdown of events and anecdotes that have led to, at the very least, this blogpost.
Leave a comment if you enjoyed it. I’d love to know if it resonated (and if you were able to get through to the end!).
I recently started working with one of my favourite writers on the internet, Lawrence Yeo, on his Storytelling Course ‘Thinking in Stories’. After completing the course last year, I was humbled that Lawrence thought to choose me as a ‘Story Ranger’ for this years cohort. My job is to give detailed feedback to the students on their work, and it’s been wonderful for my own writing to critique various types of essays.
As Lawrence and I caught up in our first 1-1 session, he asked me how my creative work has been going.
I launched into a lament of the long-term burnout that I’ve been experiencing for nearly a year now. It’s been bugging me that I have plateaued in my creative output, and I told him I’m worried about the future of my content (i.e. $$$).
Lawrence, being the great mentor he is, assuaged me by mentioning his amazing and epic post called The Arc of the Practical Creator, where he thoroughly details his thoughts on this ‘Creator Economy’ (highly recommend this read for you creatives out there).
“By the way’, he adds in our conversation, ‘this ‘creator economy’ is such a small and new part of the entire creative landscape if you think about it.’
So I thought about it. And you know what?
Lawrence is right.
Rethinking the creator economy
Why am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Feeling the need to monetize my videos has escalated into an obsession to ‘successfully’ validate my YT passion, so much so that I’ve left the actual creative part on the wayside. I’ve forgotten why I’m doing this in the first place.
But this seems to be a common problem in the creator landscape. Recently I stumbled on Rob Hardy’s blog (a wonderful place for alternative ‘content creation’ thinking).
“Part of me could always sense I was living out of integrity. But another, much louder part convinced me I just had to work harder, force myself more, and that the passion would return once my business got big enough. "You'll feel better when you're pulling in six figures," the inner dictator would say.” - Rob Hardy, The perils of niching down
And this is the unfortunate story I kept spinning myself - that if I keep going with yT for the sake of future monetary success, it will work.
This is exactly why I feel so burnt out.
My metrics of success were defined incorrectly from the start. With a very niche number of people talking about what ‘success’ looks like on YouTube, it is (unfortunately) very numbers based. The higher the figure, the better you’re doing.
In obsessing over how to drive my channel forward, (through various channels like Film Booth or PTYA) I was losing my ‘feeling (of being) alive, authentic, connected, free’ (Rob’s words, not mine).
Finding the right way
Instead of looking for goals, look for exploration. Exploration is continuous, there is no end point. Focusing on exploration is very rewarding all the time. - Scott Adams
Whilst my wagon of progress hasn’t advanced as far as I’d hoped 2 years ago (when I set out on this journey), I also realise that my expectations were too prescriptive. Earning x amount of money was a grade-bound target that, if not met, would inevitably lead to ‘failure’. I had set myself up for disappointment without even knowing it.
Something had to change. That’s why I slowed down and moved into a more ‘explorative’ state, as Scott mentioned above. Time to push the numbers aside and focus on creating for the love of it. In the process, I’ve been shifting what success looks like for me. I’ve been learning to appreciate the journey I’ve already completed for what it is, whilst being able to look forward with more creative clarity.
“The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.”
- Neil Gaiman
As I’ve started to slow down on socials, I’ve been finding more of a personal cadence.
I’ve come to the realisation that I’m so burned out because I’ve been constantly running on ‘duty tasks’ - tasks that I feel obliged to do. Youtube Videos, blogposts, even IG posts fall into this category.
On the other hand, tasks like writing in my journal, yoga, and my most recent acquisition of meditation all fall into the category of ‘personal tasks’ - tasks that are purely, wholly, unadulteratedly selfish (the good kind).
These three acts have contributed so much to unlocking my state of flow. In filling up so many journal pages, I have come to learn how to write much faster and clearer.
This state of flow has also seemed to clear blocks in my art life. I’ve set up a studio space in a corner of my bedroom (a space of organised chaos to not disturb the white furniture that my mother so likes).
The kind of work I’ve been making are simple ink and water pieces, using a variety of bristle brushes, makeup brushes, sponges, rollers, string, and whatever else I can get my hands on that makes an interesting mark. I find a lot of internal resonance in both admiring, and making brushstrokes. There’s a careless yet controlled freedom within each one. Maybe I’ll elaborate more on these pieces in a future blogpost as I play more. I’ll definitely be posting a YT video about it this week.
I’ve been learning to submit to the abstract expressionist in me, mark-making and following my intuition. A great source of inspiration has been Coleen Baik’s blog - she’s an artist, designer, and animator who I really admire, check out her work.
So what I’ve learned is…
I’ve decided that I’m not going to allow the algorithm to take over my life, particularly not when I have so much life work going on. In order to do this, the intention with which I make videos needs to change - what I’m filming, how I’m writing, and why I’m even making these videos or posts. Oh, and my definition of YouTube success.
My personal measure of success in doing what I love is looking back at my work and still enjoying it. I’ve found that old YouTube videos or blog posts are gold mines (yet another Lawrence reference there). It makes me think that hey, even if no one’s looking at this stuff - it’s benefitting me! I’m seeing my progress (and sometimes de-progress when I see I don’t practice things I’ve talked about in previous videos!).
So despite that I haven’t been posting or publishing, transitioning into a standard schedule is still important in the long run, even if only for myself. It produces tangible results which give me the feeling that I’m progressing as a creative, as an artist.
After such a long offline spell, I’ve become scared to even start a blog post for fear of falling back into the trap of creating for growth. Nevertheless, I feel it’s important to share. After all, it’s through following the small-but-meaningful creatives, like Lawrence, Rob, and Coleen, that I have become truly inspired over the last few months.
And I hope, in this long-winded post, you have found something in this too.