Looking After Yourself

Yesterday I saw a moving video from a Youtuber I follow. Nearly a year ago he had quit his day job to work on his dream job… full time on the youtube channel that he’d created, talking about camping in the wilds and all things related.

But it hadn’t quite worked out, even though it paid him a wage. He had suffered some mental health issues as he had allowed himself to get sucked down the rabbit hole of social media, and the Chasing The Numbers game.
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I believe he did the right thing by talking about it openly and honestly in the video I watched. And he planned to continue with his channel, but to learn from his mistakes.

But it made me think, once again, that there is a lot to be said for keeping our creative outlets as a hobby. At the very least any attempt to make the leap and turn our favourite pastimes into a profession should not be taken lightly.

These aren’t easy decisions to be made for creative people, and it is an issue that can keep cropping up when we start measuring our “success” in terms of money and recognition.

We need outlets for our art that don’t make those two things the main priority.