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Don’t do creative things for other people’s praise, do it for yourself!
I do the reading and research required to make my posts for myself, but the time spent to turn that into a good post is not insignificant. The sharing is to try to build up Lemmy as a community, and to try to help save other people time doing the learning that I’ve done. It’s an act of giving of my time to try to make a positive change in others’ lives. It’s a voluntary personal sacrifice, and just seeing some happy responses is all I hope to get. It isn’t for people to sing my praises, but to receive a positive comment in return is what shows me that I’m not throwing my work into an empty void and just wasting my time. It’s the only feedback we get here, and I think we should all give more feedback to the posts we enjoy if we wish to keep getting them. I feel that is a very fair price to pay for free content.
I was thinking about this last night. I would never have bothered to make this much content for a place like Reddit or Facebook as there is just too much attention on other things. Over the last year I’ve spent who knows how much time making, finding, and editing content on here and engaging people to try to keep their attention. It’s nice in that I feel heard, but it’s also such a small crowd, I notice when people show up and start participating, but also when they stop participating. I’ve built a pretty big following for Lemmy. I’m currently juuuuust not making the first page of biggest communities, but I feel I’m doing well for a niche community here. But the given number of regular commentors I get feels like it hasn’t increased over the last 9 months. As soon as I get new people that comment and participate, the same number drop off. It just feels like I’m not getting anywhere, and it makes me question this as a platform. I’ve got about a half dozen people I’d call regulars, and new people pop in and out, but if I stop to think about the effort in, I wonder how much minimum user feedback I can get by with to do this another whole year.
My current goal is to make it to December and do the Superbowl Owl of the Year Tournament again. That was a huge boost to the community for those few weeks, but that was a toooon of effort to do by myself. Thankfully someone usually chimes in with some positivity and has a very enthusiastic response to something I’ve shared that can boost my morale, but it really is tough to keep putting work into what many times feels like a void. I always make sure to thank commentors for saying nice things or just participating, because I wouldn’t keep doing this without them. I always tell anyone who listens the commentors are just as important as the posters because you won’t have one without the other.
I hope for great success for everyone on Lemmy as a platform, but we all need to always try to be more active than we are if that’s going to happen. Just post a “I really enjoyed this! Thanks so much for sharing!” once every day or so if you don’t feel you have anything topical to add to a post you enjoyed. I know it means a lot to me to see that on my work, and I’m sure it does to most posters. Even when I just share a picture, I may have spent an hour scrolling to find you that pic, verify it’s not AI or stolen, and find a little fact or something to add to the post, It’s a really quick and easy way to do a nice thing to show someone that made something for your enjoyment that it reached someone.
Or, as what happened with me, people start to notice your work and stuff gets popular and you get real chances of earning money and getting jobs from it but you buckle under the pressure you put on yourself and end up killing your creativity. It’s been almost a decade and I’m still unable to make things as I did before.
I feel this deeply. When I have been really depressed, it is like all my creativity has drained out of me, and I second guessed even boiling water when I am actually an amazing cook. I am very lucky my mom likes to cook with me (she calls herself my sous chef, so sweet) and put up with affirming me almost continually for awhile when we cooked together. I hope I never end up back there; dark times. Having a therapist has also really helped. I hope you find a way back to your creativity. It may never be quite the same, but I promise it can be great again in a new way. Baby steps, not giant leaps.
Cool dad, I just wanted you to be proud of me but I guess you can use it to attention whore if you want…
Well I’m just saying your basic bitch furry drawings and comics with no style aren’t going to get praise from me. That’s for sure.
Yeesh, think I got smallpox from this comment.
I’ve been posting creative OC for ages because I enjoy it. It’s great to have people bounce their own creativity back. I don’t need an audience of millions.
Recently I started doing commissions, which means that the stuff I’m posting is also being paid for, which is nice. It doesn’t change my desire to post my stuff for the sake of it.
Oof, this one hits a little too close to home.
