Why Are you creating?

As I reach the one year anniversary of this adventure, I have found it important to ponder what it is that makes us feel successful. Throughout my conversations with creatives, a few things kept coming up that I couldn’t get out of my head. One; The most financially successful people, seemed drained, not creative, and fighting the urge to continue uploading despite knowing that the money had already arrived. They voiced concerns that they couldn’t experiment or deviate from the plan that is currently working. On the other hand I talked with artists that have not made any monetary gains from their time online, but they are happy to see people are enjoying the work. So I started thinking how can we marry those two feelings together. 

When my wife and I first started dating I remember telling her my goal was to make 100k in a year. Keep in mind, I was around 24 at the time and had yet to break 30k. Being an artist in a big city is not for the faint of heart. I still remember the first time I broke 50k, and around 12 years after that I finally made it to around 85k which to this point is the most I have ever made in one year living a creative life. The older I get I started to realize that not very many people actually make that much on their own. According to Statista roughly 1 out of 5 people will accomplish this on their own, but roughly 41% of families are making this much when they combine all income. I am not trying to derail you from your dream, but now that I have lost that 85k, and made less over the past 12 months than I had in over a decade I started to realize that money shouldn’t be the primary goal. You can always make more money, but when success is exclusively tied to the $ it makes it very hard to find happiness in the daily creations. It seems as if we are going to have to work together.

How Do You Define Success?

As I start year 2, I want to talk about success. You might be reading this thinking why would this guy do this if there’s no money. As humans we have to find purpose and value to our lives. We need to know that we are safe. This is something my new pup has taught me over her first week of living with us. She just wants to know that she can trust the new environment. I want to be able to trust my environment as well. Money doesn’t buy trust, so why is this metric for success so prevalent in our culture? I don’t have the answers, but I am hopeful that one day we will share them with each other.

When I started work on this project last year, I gave myself a 3-5 year window. This was the same window I gave my early 20’s self as I backed out of my house in Kansas City and headed west. I am more aware than ever that I couldn’t have made it this far on my own. Conversations I had decades ago are the reason I am now an educator. Conversations I had with educators 5 years ago, are now turning into professional development sessions where I will be teaching other teachers the things that you have enjoyed on this channel. If I was only taking those meetings for the money, I would have never been here today thinking about what is truly important. 

Why are you doing what you are doing? Did you see someone showing you how they made 70k in a month? Trust me, this is the most difficult way to make money, especially if you are looking for a quick fix. 

As we move into the next phase, I am excited to say I will be heading back into a school setting. I will be taking on the role of an executive producer for a student ran news station. I have done this in the past when I taught broadcast journalism, but now I’m thinking about what would happen if students approached local issues? Instead of focusing only on the world, what is something that you could actually fix this month in your own community? What would happen if success looked like helping someone else be successful? What is something that you could build together by sharing what you know and love. 

This is what I am most interested at the moment. I am intrigued by what might happen if we went back to the community in local issues. Instead of saying “I wish someone would pick up that trash”, maybe you just pick it up. 

Monetizing this channel took almost 275 days of free work, and over the past two months it still hasn’t made $100 in ad sense. This was never about the money, even though I believe that will eventually come. Remember the 3-5 year plan? I want to make sure that I am making for the right reasons.

So as you go out in the world today, think about why you want to create? What problems do you want to fix in the world? What kind of life do you want to live? When you start to consider the bigger questions, the world starts to shine. Take a risk, create without expectations, savor the breeze, or just sit in the sun with the new pup. You never know, one day you might wake up and see that almost 2500 people have stopped by your studio over the past year.

Thank you so much for being a part of this journey, it means more than you will ever know.

Jerry