I’m at a point where I’m wondering if it even makes sense to try and promote my work. The goal was to become fully sustainable from my work as an artist (fiction, podcasts, music). I don't know if trying to achieve that goal is even worth it at this point. In the end will it cost my passion for the work?
I feel like I’ve hit a ceiling.
I’ll do my best not to complain here, actually I feel fine, I’m just trying to figure out where to put my energy right now because it seems my effort is not having the effect I want it to have.
Trying to convince people to pay attention to my work doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel like what I’m here to do. And if there was a cumulative effect, if things were consistently going up, however slow, it might be easier to justify. They are not.
After the initial excitement (which is very small to begin with) of a new project, everything lulls down to near silence. Pushing my work on social media aggressively seems to register as a blip but it doesn't grow, and even if a few friends share my work, it never seems to stick anywhere.
That either means my work just isn’t interesting to people or it means it’s still not reaching the people its intended for, or reaching them the right way.
I've already tried catering to the masses and not catering to them at all, and I thought I found a happy middle place, but it becomes less and less effective over time because the algorithms seem to want you to be as simple as possible and to rally behind an existing culture rather than trying to be your own.
It's an uphill batter for people who aren't trying to fit in, no matter who they are and what they share.
Constantly sharing links doesn’t really feel right, it feels abusive. It feels like begging for something. Even if that’s not how I frame it, it feels forced.
The thing is I’m not even doing that much of it. If I were to stop doing it, my work wouldn’t reach anyone at all.
I could just share it at hive and forget about putting it elsewhere but we all know how quickly things disappear with a seven day payout window. I love Hive but i want to be open and available to other people outside of a single community. The way people interact with Hive content still doesn't make it a very good environment for timeless work.
On other platforms things were going pretty well for a while but the happier I become with my work, the more ruthless the algorithms became, and the harder it became to maintain people's interest.
I built up a small but meaningful following on both Twitter and YouTube, and some of these people even checked out my books and my podcast. Typically I got about 20-30 likes per tweet. Now I get about 3-5 most of the time (often the same hive friends). Whether this is because some people following me left when Musk took over, or whether it’s due to the change in the algorithm, this is discouraging. My primary reason for using the platform is to connect to people outside of Hive because I don’t have many other ways to do so.
I was getting 100-300 views per youtube video due to the algorithm recommending it, but now I get 5-10. Should I even bother?
I suspect all my problems on social media are due to the fact that I’m not hyper focused on a single topic. I’m also balancing a bunch of different projects so the algorithm gets confused. The typical solution would be to separate all of these projects on social media and to manage multiple accounts, but that would add a lot of extra unnecessary work and I’m not sure I have any more time to spend on managing accounts. If half of my time is spent managing social media, I’m not sure if it’s worth it.
I’m starting to wonder if I maybe don’t have what it takes to earn a living from creating the things I want to create, and if it’s really possible to reach the people I want to reach doing what comes naturally to me. I may just have to accept that I am nothing more than a hobbyist.
That’s a bit painful for me. I’d like to think I have what it takes and that one day I could earn my living doing the things i love, that i may actually reach people and be treated as the person I see myself, someone with important ideas, someone capable of healing through storytelling, conversation and song.
But the power of my work comes from the fact that it was inspired. I recieved it through becoming clean enough that i could serve as a vessel, by consistently following my excitement and healing myself and exploring. I did not achieve anything through the mindset of scarcity that told me I had to sacrficie doing things my way in order to achieve anything. I worked hard but mainly when it felt right and mainly when it felt like i was doing the work i wanted to be doing.
So something about promoting my work doesn’t feel right. It feels like I am feeding into unhealthy emotions like FOMO and addiction. Do i really want people to become addicted to my work, or do i want them to feel moved by it. These are not the same thing.
The fact is we are still living in a world where people are acting based on their fears and insecurities. Perhaps there is nothing truly wrong with this and its ok to play with those fears and insecurities in order to help heal them, but this is still not something that excites me, so perhaps I’m not the artist I think I am.
There are two kinds of artists who make it, who are able to live in abundance through their work, those who work to manipulate their audience, and those who are in the right place at the right time and have work thats brilliant enough to spread. I want to be the latter.
But being the latter means being willing to accept an extremely high chance of failure, of never being able to live comfortably from your work. For every great artist that makes it there are tens of thousands of geniuses who give up or who no one ever knows. There is a chance that no one appreciates you until you die or that you run out of energy and give up before you reach anyone.
There is also a chance that I’m just not good enough for anyone to want to pay money for.
Whats the purpose of reaching people anyway? Is it to change them? Aren’t I done doing things with expectations for a result? Don’t I want to make music for music’s sake? Don’t I want to make the podcasts with the intention of loving the whole process?
I’m trying to figure this all out and it’s inevitable that people taking interest makes me want to create more, and people not taking an interest leaves me wondering what do I truly enjoy.
I still don’t have an answer.
I am trying to find a way to be ok with however people react or don't react to my work, but I'm also wondering, if nobody cared and if there was no chance of earning a living from it, would I bother sharing anything, or would I just enjoy these ideas as they are in my head?
Is my energy inconsistent? Am I contracting myself in my behaviors? I am not sure so I'm spending some time to try and figure that out.