Finding My Passion

Being only twenty three years old, people have always told me that I had plenty of time to figure out what I wanted to do. Usually, it's after I tell them about what I actually do.. what I'm actually passionate about. If I had a dollar for the amount of times I've been told that my own personal passions and career goals were going to be the reason I grow up to become homeless and living on the streets, I'd probably be able to afford to buy myself a nice sized house. I'm a content creator. It's the career that makes all of the older generations roll their eyes, while the younger generations all fight to get themselves up to the top along with you.

Time's are changing. Seriously. Way back when, the ideal careers were those that involved having to go get a higher education just to have the dream you've always wanted. Hell. It used to be where the woman dreamt of staying at home being a mom while her husband was out getting the cash needed to feed, clothe, and keep a roof over his family. The only reason most women first started going into an actual workforce (besides the stereotypical "female careers" such as nurses and educators) was because men all got sent out to fight a World War back in the 1940s. So who's to say I can't just adapt myself to the new world of electronics and social media to help me try and find a way to make money while not actually leaving my house?

Nowadays, more and more kids are having the dream of being a YouTuber or Streamer.

It has become such an epidemic that most parents are starting to constantly remind their children how "impractical" it is. In what feels like every new movie or tv show, it's almost as if they started to even crack jokes about this way of life. They have even made tv shows based off being a content creator (i.e. the new Gossip Girl reboot).

Although my generation did have shows like ICarly growing up so.. is that really any different?

This lifestyle isn't that hard to start, but boy is it extremely hard to maintain. Kids nowadays don't usually think much about what it's like to be a content creator. They just watch some other teenager or adult doing it and automatically they want to be exactly that. Makes sense. Kids won't see the complicated side to a person posting videos to a website for a living.. they just see the person in the video having the time of their life.

But becoming a content creator definitely is not something I'd recommend for someone with absolutely no patience. Doing this will definitely take time just to put your name out there, not to mention it'll take even longer just to make your first buck. With enough consistency, motivation, and a teensy bit of luck, it should take a minimum of one year before you are actually out there doing something you absolutely love to do.

Just remember this one thing: Don't do this simply to "make money". Do this because you absolutely enjoy doing it. If you do this with the mindset being that you'll make miserable, you will hate it the second you start. If you actually just truly enjoy doing this, you'll end up having it be your absolutely favorite thing. You may even start to do this without even realizing it (i.e. creating videos just to upload for the hell of it, rather than keep up a decent schedule).

Going Rogue

"If people around you don't support your decision in this, why do you do it?" Because I absolutely love it.

I've been obsessed with being an entertainer since I could remember. As a kid, I used to set up my stuffed animals and dolls all across my bed, turn on one of my favorite CDs, and just pretend that I was the headline show for a concert they brought tickets for. I would find myself dancing around the room, singing loudly along with the music playing from my cd player.

Eventually, that moved it's way up to writing up fanfictions in the style of plays and movie scripts.. which moved on up to me starting to actually put videos out there of those same movie scripts and plays I was writing on the internet. Of course it was only fanfiction, so clearly they weren't going to go anywhere.. I just found them fun to create. That's how I discovered that this is exactly what I wanted to become. Entertaining. Writing. Film. Editing. I loved it all, and YouTube helped me get myself out there by doing every single one of them.

Why I Prefer This Over Being "Practical"

It makes me happy. I feel comfort in knowing that I'm doing something I actually enjoy, rather than doing something just because I needed the money in order to survive.

From the ages of thirteen to sixteen, I suffered through a countless number of mental illnesses that included being suicidal. I managed to convince myself that I was never going to make it to the age of eighteen so I might as well just have fun and do what I love to do before life is over. But eventually, I turned eighteen and I was still here. I was still breathing. I figured why shouldn't I keep the previous mindset because clearly I wasn't going to make it to twenty one.

Now I am twenty three years old and still here.. but finally, my mindset changed. I'm no longer convinced I won't be here much longer. Instead, I'm more just here. I had no idea I'd make it to this time of my life so I'm mostly just living life the way I want it to go without a thought in the world.

Why would I choose to give up this lifestyle for a boring life in the suburbs when I can follow in my moms footsteps and continue working towards turning my passions into the career of my dreams?

Growing up, I watched my parents live two completely different lives.

My mother had the career of her dreams as a special education teacher; a career she was planning on having since she was a child, using her dolls and stuffed animals as the students for her imaginary classroom. Sound familiar? I always love when my grandma shows me photos she has of my mom doing this as a child, because it reminds me of exactly what I used to do as a kid and that I could probably turn that memory into reality one day.

My father, on the other hand, was a different story. Of course he still did what he loved, as stated in my article here. But he never turned that into a career while he was living. My father used to work a full-time job seven days a week to pay the bills. He loved it, yes, but I just know he would have preferred doing something else if he could do it all over again.

So watching these two different adults in their careers from the standpoint of a child, I decided I wanted to follow in my mother's footsteps and find a career in something I could be passionate in. I made it my vow that I was not going to end up like my father and become trapped in some way to pay the bills for a roof over my head.

No matter how long it would take, I was deadset on finding a career based off my own personal passions.. and being a content creator gives me just that.