This past weekend I took time off (more than just a nap on my hammock) and went camping at Blue Knob State Park in southwestern Pennsylvania. It was a trip I’d needed for months.
Feeling exhausted, I sat in my float with my feet propped up on the rope that separates the boaters from the swimmers while looking at the ripples and enjoying the variations in temperatures of the water from warm to cool. It was a great time to sit and contemplate.
I’ve been a content creator before I knew it was a term people used, and I only heard “user-generated content” after becoming a community builder in the past few years. The truth is, I knew I wanted to be a creator from a very young age, and I had creative explorations, as well as took adventurous trips along the creek. I’ve always wanted to be near water, telling stories and sharing experiences with others.
But that hasn’t been the reality of life for me. The reality has been very different. I realized how much society is misguided when I think about the entire trip to this lake. I packed for the day with my float, cooler, towel, chair, and snacks.
What I didn’t prepare for was the hike I would have to take to get to my beautiful view of this lake and to be able to put my feet into the sand, while sitting in my chair, sipping on my beverage, it was going to take some effort!
Okay, so I like to have the “perfect” beach experience – right? If I waited for six months and in that time – I built a website, wrote a book, and nearly lost my business – besides all the personal issues, I want my view and drink experience – thank you very much!
But what I realized was that I’m overweight and tired, so the stuff that I carried was heavy, and it took a lot of effort. You don’t see these photos – I especially thankful that no one documented the many times I stacked up all of my stuff on top of the cooler (which has wheels) only to let it fall all over the place as I tried to slowly walk up the BIG hill, one step at a time, while wheezing, huffing, and puffing. No, you didn’t see that. But you saw my pretty beach photo and thought that I was having a great time, which I did – but it wasn’t for “free” – I worked to get there.
I’m tired of creating content so others can get rich
One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is the word value. For example, you might value a lovely home, but another person values having the money to afford lunch – there are different ways to look at how we define the word “value,” and what we decide is valuable or not valuable depends on each human’s perception. The first time I heard the word “user-generated content” it was pretty recent, in the past few years, and I didn’t know that people had been using that term for a long time. Now I realize that the work I’ve been doing all along to create images, write stories, and help others, is precisely what that means, and it means that I never got paid for my work, but I created a lot of “content” for companies over the years, and so did you. I think we’ve realized that we aren’t interested in being “content creators” anymore – but if we aren’t creating content, think about what else we could be, or learn, or explore – on our own dime or someone else’s.
We are at a critical point in history – we are the generation that WILL decide the future for the next 100 years. Yes. You heard that right, you are the person who could make a difference, and that’s what millennials are all about! This is great because that’s what community building is all about; it’s about having a place to accomplish things together.
I am currently reading a book called Like a Spark from Fire by Debra Berndt Maldonado, and took it with me on the camping trip. It didn’t disappoint; the entire book was filled with so many exciting ideas about the complexity of womanhood. As I sat on the beach and read the book written by someone who has the same first name as myself, I looked at the weather report and saw that I was in a town with my last name (Schellsburg). I started to think about how journalism works and why I wanted to be a journalist.
When I was in high school, I sat at a desk and learned about Martha Rial and others who’d become documentary photographers. I admired their courage to capture moving and powerful images, ask people to share their stories, and gather, validate, and send out that story to millions of people. I thought that is how I’d help others change and make the world a better place. But the world is focused on money, greed, and capitalism.
Recently I woke up to the fact that I understand the world, society, and the situation we are in, and I get it all, but what I don’t get is why humans continue to create their suffering (myself included.) I wanted to create powerful and captivating stories, and I knew that I had a good “eye” for visuals, and I love telling stories. The challenge is that no one wanted to pay me for this, and more than that, so many people wanted me to create something, and do other things.
When I was hired as a reporter, I was also employed as a writer, photographer, photo editor, website manager, and page layout designer. It seems that in this world when creators emerge, they are seen as the “producers”, the people who do the “labor” for others that will “reap” the benefits.
I don’t want to be a part of this system anymore.
The Next Generation; Community-led not content led.
When the first newspaper to go online, The Columbus Dispatch, launched its website, I’m unsure they knew it might be their demise, but I think they did – and it could have been avoided had they changed their business model. We have an opportunity at this very moment to change the narrative of how we create content and make a living as creators.
I’ve written a bit about the creator community movement and continue to think about how not to be a part of the problem in the future. I want to eliminate problems for the next generation, not create more problems.
This means that I want to help others find calm in daily life and my focus is helping people who want to work and live a life that they enjoy – away from the corporate grind or the startup hustle culture that has created stress, overwhelm, and an entire culture of people who are just tired of being tired of creating for others who seem always to make promises they can’t keep.
Creatives have been told that their work is subpar to the “traditional” careers and that no one can ever make “a living” as a writer, photographer, painter, comic, cartoonist, … fill in the blank creative activity.” There have only been a few times in my life when I, as a creator, ever felt that I had been fairly compensated for my work, and it didn’t come without a fight.
As a fellow creator, I believed in collaboration over competition. Still, I’ve struggled to make it as a creator because of the sheer determination and energy it takes to consistently create high-quality work without cash, hoping that one day… Someone will pay me. This is a fallacy; no one wants to pay for content because no one cares about it – unless it affects them directly.
Think about what kind of content you consume; it is about your family, your friends, your interests, your problems, your needs, or your interests – and you remove the people, content, and things from your life you don’t need to have.
This leaves you with just your stuff – your problems, your interests, and your goals – that’s what each human is focused on right now – or they are focused on getting “through” the day to get one of these things “accomplished” –
They are trying to:
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Find a new job
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Find a partner
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Find a home
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Find something to make them happy
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Find friends they like
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Find help to deal with family problems
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Find something that makes them laugh
What better way to “accomplish” these things than through a community of people?
But what community?
And how do you know if it is the “right” one for you? On top of these questions, more questions arise for me —
If we are focused on change in the next 10 years – what needs to happen?
What is the transformation we are after, and for who?
The next generation is small niche communities that serve the audiences listed above directly and specifically and don’t provide content but provide a place for people to feel seen, feel safe and heard. That takes a plan, a strategy you work on to approach these complex operations with support, resources, and money.
Content isn’t free. It costs money, time, and energy. More than ever, I’m finding that my energy is more important than money. I need energy to get up and drive to spend time with my nephew just as much as I need energy to create a blog post, and just as much as I need energy to help a client. I just can’t keep using my energy to provide social media with free content anymore. I’m done. I’m breaking up with social media – kinda – I have a book coming out this year… so I’ll still be around… but I’m asking you, and your team, to reconsider why you are creating content and the purpose of it. Think, slow down, and be mindful about what you are doing this work for; at the end of the day, most of us want to float in a lake and watch the sunset, hopefully with someone we care about.
Email: Deb@FindCalmHere.com
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