3 tips to protect your mental health as a content creator
Sometimes, I feel like I live in a world of oppositions. Nature and social media. Being engaged with my audience and disengaging in nature.
Trying to make a living as a photographer, especially one that doesn’t tend to veer towards client photography, means having to be a content creator. I need the leads that come from Instagram and Facebook, which means that I have to pay attention to the algorithms. And the algorithms rewards quantity, consistency, and short-form videos. As a photographer, it’s hard to make videos. Any time spent filming reels is time that’s being taken away from photographing. Photographing still keeps me in the moment. Filming takes me out of it.
Yes, I could just not do the social media side of things. That’s not the part of this that brings me joy. But I do want to make money doing this, and social media and the leads that come from it seem to be the most viable option.
While I would love to make photography my full-time job, it’s not. I have to work a day job to pay for my photography hobby (and rent, and bills, and all that good stuff). That means that getting out into nature is often a respite for me, a chance to recharge from staring at a screen all week (or month, depending on how long it’s been since my last hike).
And therein lies the rub, right? This is my break from my job, but it’s also something I’d like to turn lucrative, at some point. (Side note: I read somewhere that you can tell you’ve internalized capitalism if you try to monetize your hobbies and free time, but that’s a whole can of worms I won’t get into in this post.) I want to balance my desire to unplug, to be present in nature and use that time to recharge, with the desire to turn this into my full-time job. Yikes.
So what is there to be done about all of this? Here are some things I’ve found that help keep me in the moment:
Plan your videos ahead of time.
When going on a hike or camping trip, I like to pick roughly two trending audios that I am planning on using when I get back. I might bump this number up for longer trips. This puts strong boundaries around what I want to film, and two planned reels, plus a couple photos set to some music - along with the photos that I actually want to publish, but don’t appease the algorithm gods - gets me enough content for a week of posting.
Don’t post while on your trip.
There’s two reasons for this:
It’s a little bit of a safety issue. I often travel with my husband, and I don’t want to advertise on social media that we’re both out of our place, especially for longer trips. These means that I really can’t post anything super timely around our travels, but can milk our travels for a couple weeks’ worth of content once we get back. Of course, I can post things that I’ve taken prior to keep the momentum of posting going (scheduled posts to the rescue!), and this does make it so I have to live in the moment, at least a little bit.
When I post about a trip, I want to be able to engage with my followers when they interact with my content. Any time I spend interacting with content is time that I’m not spending paying attention to the actual trip that I’m on. Plus, I tend to camp in remote locations where I might not even have enough service to upload. Saving the trip content for when I’m back means that I don’t have to be editing reels or photos while on the trip and can take the time those things deserve when I get back.
Remember that the trip is about you, not your followers.
It probably sounds obvious when I write it out like that, but sometimes it’s hard to keep in mind: you don’t owe your followers anything. You don’t owe them content, you don’t owe them time, and you don’t owe them answers about why you aren’t posting on a regular basis. I take trips for myself. I take trips because I want a break from normal life. I want time to reconnect with my husband and to see my dog live his best life. Photography is a way that I keep myself in the moment of the trip and cement those memories. Thinking about how to get more followers on social media is not how I stay in the moment, and it’s the first thing that gets deprioritized. My mental health comes first, and so should yours.
I hope some of these tips were helpful to you. How do you make sure you’re staying present and enjoying your adventures?
