To be a Content Creator: A Short Story.
A reminder to myself.
You start making content out of pure passion, because it’s fun and rewarding. This is the easy phase, there is no resistance, no anxiety and no pressure. You could do this forever!
Then you start to get a little traction and you suddenly realize that you can build something. People are listening, you have an audience. You watch your views and followers increase and the reward centre of your brain laps it up. This is where everything changes. It stops being a labor of love and starts becoming a bidding war for attention. Your content is driven by your desire to see growth, you’re making what you think the algorithm will push and you lose yourself in the process. You become just another cog in the social media machine, hopping on trending topics and regurgitating the same cookie cutter content you think is working right now.
You’re no longer creating, you’re just playing a rigged game. Chasing views, followers and engagement. Sometimes you feel like quitting but then that one post blows up once in a while and it keeps you on the hamster wheel. You think you’re growing, that the dream is in sight, but you know deep down that something isn’t right. It’s hard now, the resistance is intense and the emotional swings are too much to handle.
The final chapter of your content creator dream is filled with disappointment and despair. You struggle to post anymore because your ideas are hollow and meaningless. The emptiness that you feel staring at a blank screen watching a blinking cursor starts to consume you. Eventually you just fizzle out like a dying star that once burnt so bright.
You take a moment, thinking back on your previous self. The one who loved to create, with fire in your belly and passion in your heart. What happened? What changed? It was all so easy back then.
I write this to help others who are feeling lost. This doesn’t have to be your story. The hardest part of creator growth is staying true to yourself in the face of success… that’s the real secret.