So I spoke recently at length about how I feel like the “independent content creator” bubble has burst. Yeah I know it wasn’t the most uplifting thing, and some have even criticized me for perhaps just being pessimistic and doomsday-esque about the subject.
A quick note there, I am pessimistic by nature. Success has been a fickle thing to me in life, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned through experience is that the only way I can manage my expectations of success, is if I assume failure is the default. Sure, I get depressed sometimes and I take failures hard, but believe me, when I am optimistic about things and expect to succeed, it’s devastation on a level that makes me shut down as a human.
Beyond that, though. There’s a whole different layer of the creator onion I want to unravel today. Expectations are hell, title drop. I’m sure like many of you, growing up I was a fan of many bands, artists, athletes and creators that simply dropped off the face of the earth. Suddenly they just stopped doing the thing that made you a fan.
When I first started making videos in 2012, I had such delightfully vague expectations. I saw people like Kurt, BDoubleO, Mighty Car Mods and others making their own “shows” or videos. No camera crew, no script, just their own little slice of life shown in video. It was a wildly new format at the time that focused more on the individual approach to whatever they were doing, playing games, telling stories, working on cars, whatever it was. It was genuine, and it was unhinged. More than that though, what I saw was people truly expressing themselves, and finding communities of people that appreciated them for who they were.
My expectations going in were open. All I expected was that I would enjoy the hobby, and having a place to express myself and flex some creative muscle in the process. That’s cute and find, but expressing yourself to nobody, is pretty much just the same as not expressing yourself. Thankfully I had a few friends and family around that were at least mildly interested in what I was doing. I was excited, it was a new thing I was doing and I think some of those people saw a new side of me they hadn’t previously seen. Interesting that, as 2011-2013 was probably some of the absolute darkest times in my life. I was flunking out of college, accumulating debt I knew I would never pay back. I had just lost one of my only close friends to a drunk driver. The only “romantic” relationship I had ever had in my whole life ended suddenly and tragically that sent me spiraling into depression and eventually needing therapy to help overcome the PTSD that had followed. Through all of that, making videos did something incredible for me. It made me happy, not just the process, but the fact that there was somebody, anybody out there that wanted to see and hear my stories and videos was easily the most uplifting thing that has ever happened in my life.
By 2014 things had started to change I wasn’t just making videos because it was a fun hobby that made me happy, I was making videos with the intentions of doing it for a living. This switch flipped so long before it was ever feasible. Something got to me. Confidence. Optimism. I was growing, I gained confidence in my ability to not just make content for the sake of expressing myself, I felt like I had started to make things that were truly entertaining in merit. I started making connections, with the Automation team, with Kurt, with Mindcrack, with other content creators. I started branching out to making new styles of content that invigorated me more and shared more of my story like Garage Works and Livestreams. It never felt like I had made it, I never once have felt like I had my “big break”, but I’ve had so many big steps. Colabs that doubled sometimes tripled my audience, breakout content that was the first of it’s kind that got new people interested in me like the Automation series, or sim racing let’s plays. Every big step came with a big cost. Expectations.
The fact of the matter is, every time you take a step forward, you expect their to be a next step. Success is a staircase that is so foggy you only know where you stand, you have no idea if the next step is the landing, or if it’s not there at all and you might fall right back down to the floor. In the early days, you are really not sure what that next step is going to be, so you have pretty minimal expectations of what is going to come next, and if its falling back down to the ground, it’s at least a pretty short fall. Every time you step up though, your brain gets more and more confident that the next step, is also going to be up.
The harsh reality of being someone that turns their talent into a career, no matter if that is independent or within a corporation, if you don’t keep reshaping yourself and expanding your horizons and doing new things. Those steps are going to flatten out. That is where I have reached. When I approach a new step these days, I expect it to be a landing. It has been a landing for about 2 years now. I never expect the next step to go upwards, and I live in fear of it being the one that falls out back to the ground floor. I’ve pretty much capped out on the talent front, I am expressing myself to the fullest extent. I have branched out as far as I can physically, emotionally and especially financially branch out. At the same time, the entire industry I have gotten myself involved with, also seems to be approaching a landing. The only way to find stairs now is to be wildly different, wildly talented, or wildly rich. So either you have to brace yourself for the reality of doing the best you can with what you have, or walk away.
I understand now so much more clearly why so many of my favorite bands, just stopped. So many of my favorite creators, just stopped. I used to feel bitter towards them. As if what they had achieved wasn’t enough. They had gained more fame and fortune than I’ll ever see in my life, was that not enough? No. It wasn’t enough, anymore. They made it to their landing, and they had the choice, do I reimagine myself to find the next step, do I keep going on this landing without ever seeing another step up and slowly starting to step back down, or worse fall back to ground level all together…or do I stop. I’m guessing many of them just stopped, they found a new staircase to climb. Maybe their knees gave out all together and they just wanted to walk on flat ground from now on, finding different outlets in their life that gave them enjoyment.
Damn, that’s gotta hurt. I know already the hell of expectations hurts, every project I take on that flops, or just does mediocre. Every month my audience and income shrinks, so I just keep searching for a new step to take. As much as that hurts, the thought of leaving the staircase all together, giving up, finding a new one. It scares the shit out of me. So I choose to keep wandering my landing and looking for the next step.
If that next step never comes, and eventually I have to go hunting for a new one. One thing I will always appreciate, beyond the thousands of people that gave me a piece of their time, shared some of their hard earned money to support what I do, gave encouragement…I’ll always appreciate learning what it means to have expectations of success, and why sometimes calling it an end of the journey just makes sense. I appreciate those people that made that decision so much more now than I ever did before.
This is a subject I see being a point of contention pretty often within the content creator industry. There’s always people at different stages of the staircase, looking around to others and seeing what step they are on. When you are on the bottom step, looking at someone at the 69th step, nice, and hear them say something about being worried about their status, their future, what is to come next. At face value, its insulting. I get that, I’ve felt it. I just want those people to know, if you put that much pressure on every step you take from the start, the pressure you feel as you make every step is only going to grow stronger. It will crush you. Some people never get to take a step, some people are stuck at the ground, but if the thing you are doing doesn’t make you happy without ever taking a step, then trust me, it’s going to make you desperately unhappy when you make steps and they stop coming.
If you are at the start, in the middle, or at the end of the staircase in any endeavor, good luck. Have fun. Brace yourself for the hell of expectations.
I’m braced, and I’m still going to keep looking, for now.
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