Creator's Ego - Passion, Acceptance, Praise And Money.

 

Is free will really free? Is originality really original? 

Ask this question to yourself once in a while, just to see how much you've understood the world so far. Anything that's created by you has a value. You may think that it doesn't, but it has! Because why would you create it in the first place if it didn't mean anything to you?

Selflessness - The Moral Good

Let me talk about this early on. If you are a creator, at your early stages, you create content for passion, as a medium of learning, or to record your work (The new age rule of productivity and sharing is caring). At this stage, probably you are not concerned about monetary benefits, in case if you are concerned, you shouldn't! This is because you start out with passion and most probably you don't know the business. The second motivation would be, a sense of conscious/sub conscious pride that you are helping the community. It's true, in a sense you are. Maybe you are beginner, and you want to help others, who started after you, but the point is, you still have that deep down desire to be appreciated by others, because of the fact that you've put in lot of work to your creation. Good or bad, at the least one good word from a friend or a stranger would make your day.

So a creator cannot be fully selfless at the early stages. As a modern phenomenon, most of the content creators create content or record what they are doing, for three reasons: 1. To get a job (well it looks good on their resume), 2. Appreciation (motivational factor), 3. Finally the good - sharing knowledge with the community or helping others or learning by teaching.

Think about it, at the initial stages, if you think that you are doing it selflessly for sharing knowledge and to uplift others, you would not get anywhere. Why? If you simply post your work on to the social media by sitting in some corner of the world, and expect it would take off, how could that happen? No one would really know you who, you are or who you said who you are. You have to tell that you are creating something that has a value in it, as far as the recording process is concerned, people evaluating your process also matters, that's how any social media or a community works. This is all fair and square. 

Acceptance

After a while, your content might take off, to the extent that you expected or more, or less. This is the stage where you realise what you did good, bad and ugly. If you have made a bunch of friends, who appreciates your content, according to me, you have won. You might have less audience, but they are the loyal ones. They are the ones, who uplifted you at your good and bad times (good/bad content). You might be recognised by your community members, where you would get access to people who are already ahead of your game and that could be a life changer. 

On the other hand, you might also fail. Your content might not be accepted, all the work that you've put in might go in vain. Or worse, you might get depressed and stop creating the content. What might be the reason for this? Lack of social skills, lack of marketing skills, lack of connections, or a bad quality content. If the first three are your downsides, you have to bite the bullet and accept how the modern day societal norms work and start working on building relationships, and the hard truth is some might be genuine and most of them might be fake. If your content is bad, then you should seriously work on yourself, take a break, think about how much your content matters to you and this is also a phase where you would be prompted with two options - Keep going or Quit. Ultimately your passion decides where you would be in the future.

Praise

One day you would reach a stage where you are praised for your content and recognised for your work. Don't misunderstand this with the recognition that you got earlier. This recognition is different, it is much more larger than you previously witnessed. In this stage, your content will be appreciated anyway. Because you would have created an identity and you might have a good amount of trusted audience or fans. Your word would mean something to someone, your actions mean something and your content would be noticed as a brand. Decent amount of money would be pouring by this time. 

At this stage, you would be motivated to an extent, where you strive double hard to make your content much more bigger and please your audience. Because if you only rely on branding and keep producing bad content after you got all the praise, you might go down rapidly as there would be lot of competition and mushrooms. Meanwhile you might also feel overwhelmed because of the pressure and expectations, but in most cases, you'd over come that, as there would be community support. 

Money

Once you have achieved your goals, whether be it a job, entrepreneurship, career, fame etc., you would have decent money and time to follow the passion of your choice. There was a funny post on social media other day, which said, "How to lose interest in your passion? Simple, turn your passion into everyday job."

This is actually true, when you keep on doing the same work every single day, you might get tired or frustrated. Of course, it might be your passion, but you might not feel the same enthusiasm everyday. It  could scale from lethargy to complacency. Producing content would have now become easy for you, you would have learnt the ropes by this time. And also you'd be in the hierarchy, where you could teach others.

This is a stage where you could really think about what would be your ultimate goal in life. You could market your product or content better and expand your franchise and keep working for it till the end, if you have the entrepreneurial mindset. Or you could loop back.

The Loop Back

You might feel you have achieved something in life. Now you have decent job or retired, recognition, and a community who loves you. If you are kind of person who derives happiness from your own morality or self righteousness, then you would feel, you have learnt a lot from the community and now it's time to give back. Here, you'd become a leader  with unanimous votes, and you'd be glad to work for the community. You could apply own ideas and techniques, there would be people who'd listen to you and you might derive happiness from that. This could ultimately become your life purpose, a safe heaven where you would be an angel.

Final Thoughts

Did you find the answer for the question that I asked earlier? Free will, originality. Well, with all the psychological roller coaster you went through by reading this article, you'd have realised many observations that you might have missed in your life. The concept of free will itself is an influence, originality originates from the abstract unoriginality from the past. There is no wrong in creator's ego, the struggle, the effort and most importantly the time one puts in to create something is itself an act of bravery.  There are no good or bad choices , they only exist in your perspective. Change is the only constant in life, as the time progresses, your thoughts change, your egos change, your world views change, and ultimately you change. After all we are all humans.