“Sooner or later, you’re going to have to decide if you’re a content creator, or an artist.”
– Gozer Goodspeed
Gozer’s tweet thread (via Jeffery Saddoris) is great to think about if you Make Things – either as a content creator or artist.
I wonder all the time, watching my kids view YouTube video after YouTube video: is all this content artistic? Or is it entertainment? Is there anything wrong with either approach?
A few thoughts in reaction to Gozer’s thread:
Content creation is a conveyor belt – art is a walk in the woods.
Content creation seems more about business. Not that making art can’t be a business, but content creation, as Gozer puts it, involves “relentless output” to feed an algorithm hoping someone will discover your stuff.
Art is at your speed. Content creation is at the speed of an audience’s appetite.
A lot of this speaks to artists as business owners (music in Gozer’s case) – but I bet a lot of hobbyists see “content creation” as their ticket to the big money. Actually making an income from your artistic hobby can be very, very difficult for most people.
I consider myself someone who makes and shares the things I make, at my own pace, for a very small audience. But I do it for me, not them, and I certainly don’t do it to feed a social media platform.
And then there’s the language that gets thrown around in business and entertainment and just about everywhere: do you make “content?” Or do you make photographs?
For those of us that embrace it, part of living the liberal arts lifestyle is you’re interested in everything. You get to know a little about a lot, which makes you great at trivia, but maybe not so great at developing a long-term skillset. “A mile wide and an inch deep,” and all those other cliches, come from a place of truth.
I have 20 different ciders and beers in my fridge because VaRiETy iS thE sPIce oF LiFe or something.
This is true for hobbies as well, and as I look back, I can see the corpses of a handful of hobbies I’ve picked up, absorbed, and then left behind. It’s had me thinking about why I do this sort of thing, and what are the downsides. Is there any relief for this sort of “serial hobby” behavior and mindset? Is there anything worth correcting?
What is a “serial hobbyist,” anyway? Here’s what The Hobbyist Girl has to say:
Serial hobbyists get fully engrossed in the hobby of the moment, learns as much as she can very quickly, can think of nothing else and does nothing else for a while, then gets bored, loses interest, and moves on to the next shiny new hobby.
I can see all of the above in myself: going from one interest to the next; going all-in on something to learn everything there is about it; all while not ever completely leaving a hobby behind.
Lately, I’ve picked up my Newton Poetry blog after a five-year absence, only to find the blog had shut down sometime in the past due to a WordPress and database error. That’s fixed, but now I’m surrounded by my old Apple Newtons and Macintoshes and reliving some past blogging glory from my previous hobby.
There is something gratifying about rediscovering a hobby, like chatting with a long-lost friend. But it can also be like going out again with an ex, and you start to remember why you left.
Giving some credit to photography – for me, it’s always been there. I’ve consistently been the shutterbug in my family and group of friends. Taking up photography was simply “getting serious” about this ever-present activity. And, it’s been my longest-term hobby, lasting more than 10 years since I picked up my first DSLR (a Canon T1i – remember those?).
Some hobbies stick around forever. I’ve always loved to write, read, spend time outside, play a Mario or Zelda video game, and I’m starting to count photography in that “always” list.
Except for regret, there’s little in terms of downsides to being a serial hobbyist. You do spend money on hobbies, but not so much that your financial wellness is in jeopardy. There are space and clutter considerations, and that became the big issue with my classic Mac collecting. When I bought my first house, I had more space to collect – but it made me stop and think, “Do I really want to fill up my new home with G3-era Macs?” So I stopped.
Photography can be an expensive hobby, but it can generate income as well. Most of my new gear was paid for by doing wedding gigs. Now, I’ve pretty much stopped collecting any new photography gear because I have everything I’d ever need. Any new acquisitions were mostly gifts from people who knew I was a photographer – in fact, that’s how I received most of my film cameras. Still, all of that photo gear still only fills two boxes next to my desk.
For me, the biggest downside is – what’s next? What is going to take over my brain and consume all of my short-term passion? Because if the past is any indication, there’s another hobby with my name on it, right around the corner.
And there, too – maybe there’s no downside at all. Maybe this is just me.
Lately, life – and especially working while at home – has been full of background music channels on YouTube.
Take this Coffee Beats channel. Or this Acid Jazz & Grooves channel. YouTube is full of these kinds of background music channels, with styles ranging from low-fi to chill to jazz to whatever your brain needs. There’s the famous lofi hip hop girl. You can even find some background video game music (just about anything with Animal Crossing works).
I’ve noticed that I’m listening less and less to my kind of music: progressive, metal, rock and roll – the kind of stuff I’d usually listen to on Spotify or my iPod.
With all that’s going on in the world, what my brain needs is something simple – something that can hang out in the background and not get in the way, yet enjoyable enough to not be annoying.
“I believe anyone can become a great founder, a great engineer, a great designer, a great concept artist, a great fine art painter, a great filmmaker, a great writer…
Not that everyone will, but that anyone can. And it’s getting easier every day.” – Sahil Lavingia, founder of Gumroad.
It’s so true. We have an infinite number of possibilities – and if there isn’t a possibility for you, you can learn something new and go create it yourself.
I needed a platform to sell my books, keep customers up to date, and collect shipping information. Gumroad was that for me during Artists In Jackson, and it’s there for me again for the new project. It’s simple, reliable, and flexible.
I’ve considered myself a writer for just about as long as I learned to read and write.
When I was a kid, one of my grandparents gave me a typewriter – one of those old, mechanical models, the kind you didn’t plug into the wall. As a kid, and with the help of a model sailing ship, I wrote out pirate adventures. Way before I knew what it meant, I was creating serialized stories.
Journalism came naturally in high school and college, and the habits I picked up from my reporting days stuck with me.
Today, most of my job, and a big part of my personal life, involves writing stories – mostly non-fictional stories, but there are protagonists and a plot, just like with those early pirate tales. To write a story, I start with good notes: what’s going on? What does a person have to say about the story? What is the order of events? What happens next?
From those handwritten notes, I type them up into a text document in the same order I wrote them down. These notes are the basic building blocks of the story – section by section, event by event, quote by quote. I use these notes to connect the dots, try to make the story more interesting, and outline a basic inverted pyramid structure: all the interesting stuff goes first.
Taking those notes and arranging them, Lego-style, into a story that makes sense is where the creativity of non-fiction writing comes in. You have the story as the person told it, but you also have to act as a go-between with the reader. What questions would they have? What info do they need to understand what’s happening? Is there a point or climax to all this?
Re-arrange the story blocks, throw in a quote or three from the subject, and start and end with something interesting – that’s how I write a story. You can see this process come to life in any of my Artists In Jackson subjects. Each of those profiles started and finished with this process.
The process has served me well, and every time I start a new story, I start with a conversation and good notes. The rest is arranging those building blocks until it’s a story worth writing.
I feel terrible that I forgot where I got this, but Jessica Ivins’s “My Advice for Becoming a UX Designer” is great advice for almost any creative pursuit. Photographer? Graphic designer? Writer? Sculptor? It all applies.
Do you have the aptitude? Join a community. Learn more. Get great advice. Make more stuff.
Looking at that list, it’s good advice for any career or hobby.
Study the greats that came before you. Don’t just look at the greats, actually study them. What makes their work stand out among the rest? How do they use light in interesting ways? How do you feel when you look at their images and what’s making you feel that way? Know their work so you can know more about your own.
Sasso’s advice echoes a lot of the Creativity Racket™ out there (experiment, be yourself, be original, etc.), but it’s a nice reminder that we all have quibbles and quirks, and that’s okay.
His “it’s okay to take a second for yourself during a shoot” note is especially apt for those of us that get wound up or nervous during shoots.
