we are so back
on graduating, finding a job, and where i’m at creatively
hello!
it’s been about a year since i last updated substack… horrifying. somehow there’s over 70 of you here now! i’m not sure how you found me, since i barely promote my substack if at all. so thank you for caring about me and my work, and thank you for being here!
a lot has happened since i last wrote, so let’s get into it :)
life updates
if you missed it, i did an exchange semester in the UK last year (from september till december!) and i got to travel around europe lots. but honestly, it got lonely and i was pretty homesick. i really missed the food at home and the fish and chips just wasn’t doing it for me :/
i wrapped up my last semester of uni! my finals ended in april, and i was doing a part-time internship alongside it, so hectic doesn’t even begin to describe it. i can’t say i’ll miss school because i only remember being constantly stressed and playing catch-up on notes every week. maybe i will down the line. but graduating feels weird, since my content journey has basically seen me through the majority of my schooling life.
i went on my graduation trip! i travelled with my family to china and japan for two weeks right after finals ended. we did fun things like sightseeing, strawberry picking, and a bunch of craft workshops. suddenly life is good again lol.
i got a job! i double major in marketing and psychology, and i’d been panic-applying to roles since the start of the year. marketing is especially competitive, so i’m relieved that i won’t be idle for long after graduation (technically, i have yet to graduate; i still need to get my transcript and attend commencement…)
being a content creator
i’m not going to be doing content creation as a full-time thing. i’d never seriously considered it, but i did get asked this a few times during interviews (because i do list it on my resume haha), and i suppose it would be a logical step to take. but here are my reasons:
i like to document the new projects i work on and not churn out the same formula of posts all the time, which also means if i depend on this as my main source of income, i’d need to be coming up with fresh ideas to post regularly. maybe i’m just boxing myself into an unsustainable content format, but i just don’t get fulfilment from regurgitating content that i see other creators sharing about already, and if i don’t see the value in creating something, then it’s hard to imagine others will see the value in receiving it either. and i’m already always thinking “hey this would be a good video or post” 24/7, and it feels it can consume my creative drive if i’m not careful. so i’ve concluded it has to be something that i take time out to do, and not something i’m worrying about all the time.
i’d say i’ve grown to be pretty confident in my abilities, given the opportunities i’ve been afforded, but there is still so much to learn from other peoples’ lived experiences. like, i’ve met so many of the coolest people i know at my workplaces. i think that focusing solely on creating content online, especially at my age, would limit my experiences and stunt my personal growth.
i don’t make enough to support myself; i’m quite certain i make a lot less than other creators my size do, and it’s mostly because i reject a lot of offers that don’t align with what i want to post. i think protecting my “brand” (so to speak) is a lot more important than selling out for a quick buck (the number of emails i get to promote AI tools in a week…); i see more value in protecting the community that i’ve formed over the years.
i appreciate the routine that having a proper 9 to 5 gives me. whenever i had the time to frolic during school breaks, i would end up wasting the whole day perfecting just a single aspect of a project (parkinson’s law!) and feel unfulfilled; oddly enough, having to attend classes and rushing homework all the time made me use the few hours I could spare that much more efficiently.
the ideas i get for projects are almost always borne out of things i do in my daily life (like coming up with a notion template for students, as a student myself), so it feels almost imperative that content creation accompanies my everyday life rather than becomes it. besides, i think it would be hard to serve an audience that goes about a very normal life whilst i fully dedicate myself to content creation. i’ve personally mourned one too many content creators going from sharing about their lives to committing to an influencer lifestyle that couldn’t be more unrelatable.
so there’s that. i do worry that i’m just justifying my decision to myself because i’m too chicken to commit to this full-time though. perhaps i’ll change my mind after toiling away in an office job for a few years, but right now i’m comfortable with where i’m at.
moving forward with my content
i try to do an audit of my socials once in a while. since i’m a mostly faceless account, i think it helps to evaluate my content and see if it reflects me well; basically how a stranger online would be perceiving my work.
i’m kind of in a weird place, because i had so many passion projects i was looking forward to working on when i was juggling school commitments, studying for finals and having an internship, but suddenly with all this free time i can’t even bring myself to think about diving into a new project (i could barely bring myself to colour grade my travel photos lol).
i wonder a lot about the longevity of my stint as a content creator. obviously the only way to keep at it is to avoid being stagnant and keep learning so that my content can evolve. this hasn’t really been a problem so far, because as i consume content online in my free time and as i work on different creative projects, i naturally get drawn to learning new skills (e.g. digital illustration, graphic design, web design, etc). and while i did/do still want to explore all these things, there’s always this feeling at the back of mind worrying about how i can package it as a story for my audience, because i do still care about how my work is received, and i guess people losing interest in my work/me is something i’m always worried about.
which then makes me feel kind of performative about my being a creative being, like, am i doing this just to post about it? i pursue plenty of things without trying to make it into a piece of content, but being able to receive public feedback from a community obviously plays a role in some stuff i choose to do.
it’s been both a good and bad thing for me, because for years i’ve been working this way, and if i didn’t have a public record of my work to be accountable for, i probably wouldn’t have pushed myself to do half the things i’ve accomplished. but lately i’ve been veering into burnout territory, because i can be sitting quietly and still be stressing over whether my next post will “perform well enough”.
everyone’s always harping on how important being authentic to an online audience is, but i haven’t figured out a way to do that without compromising my own privacy. when i view other creators sharing overly vulnerable stories… i think it depends on what it is; sometimes it helps to convey authenticity, but other times i feel like it cheapens what they’re sharing about. when you condense an entire experience into a post, you kind of have to flatten the depth of the situation to make it palatable for a generic audience. does that make sense?
like, you’d be taking a very real, emotional and vulnerable moment and packaging it into a graphic/video and caption with a pretty bow for people online to consume for few seconds before they scroll, all to come off as authentic and relatable, to get more clicks or something. i feel like it ironically becomes insincere and it kind of gives me the ick. but this may just be a me problem, because then i end up not sharing in-depth at all, which i suppose makes me lose the “authentic” edge that helps an audience relate to just one of many faceless creators online.
gah, sorry for being so long-winded! all this to say, i feel like i come off as pretty one-dimensional on my main platform (instagram), which sucks because that’s where the bulk of my community is. but it’s a struggle to be more real when the nature of short-form content consumption is so very ephemeral.
so i’m toying with the idea of putting more focus on my youtube channel, since its content format is a lot more bingeable. it also allows me to work on different video series at once, which is helpful since i don’t always want to stick to one thing. but long-form videos require a lot of groundwork, and is quite different from what i’m used to. still, i’m excited to see where it’ll take me!
thank you so much if you made it this far – i tend to save my stream-of-consciousness rambling for substack, because it feels like i can afford to be more candid here. as always, if you’re also navigating content creation, or just want to give your two cents, i’d love to hear it!
till next time,
rae
Congrats on graduating soon and on your job, Rae! I'm in the same life stage as you and feeling nervous about starting work soon. Your creative projects inspire me a lot so thanks for sharing!