6 Tips for Digital Creator Anxiety

I want to preface this post by saying it’s a lot of do as I say, not as I do. Kidding. I’m trying to do it, but I also want to acknowledge it’s hard dealing with digital creator anxiety and this is basically me saying ‘hey these things might help BOTH of us’. So it’s been such a long year. I’ve really fallen out of writing here. Blame social media. 15 years ago it was all about blogging and then social media took off and it was micro-blogging. Images with decent sized captions. Then the age of TikTok came and it was about quick videos and now? Does anyone even know what we’re doing anymore?

Not just me? Good. So let’s jump right in. If you’re a digital creator there’s a pretty big chance that the last year has been weird for your business. Me? I’ve been so anxious. Like SO anxious. At one point in my life I conquered morning anxiety and now I wake up and my first thought is ‘pretty please let me have some sales or new Patreon subscriptions‘ and if the inbox is empty? Instant dread. Terrible way to start the day. 10/10 do not recommend.

I’ve been stuck in my head about my work, my business, and whether I’m doing enough. Whether I AM enough.

I always told myself that I never wanted to be a full-time creator. I loved what I did but I never wanted to create from a place of survival instead of joy. Having my day job meant that my art and my words got to just be mine. They didn’t have to pay the bills and I loved that.

And then covid happened and I quit my other job annnnd became a full-time creator. (The Universe has a sense of humor.)

I love what I do so much. I get to draw cute things and write about mental health and make workbooks that help people. 10-years-ago-Dominee would have lost her mind if she knew. But this year it really hit me:

“Am I enough to do this forever?” Good enough? Flexible enough? Creative enough?

And I really want that answer to be yes. Everyone celebrates when you take that first step and become self-employed. People cheer you on and it’s exciting and scary and wonderful. But no one really talks about how stressful it is to think about whether 10 years from now, you’ll still be able to keep doing it. Nobody warns you that the leap is only the beginning of the scary part and I’m struggling because my anxiety wants to know 100% that I will still have this awesome job in a decade and my brain just can’t promise that.

So let’s talk about AI and digital creator anxiety

I want to say this up front: I’m not trying to do an anti-AI or “technology is evil” post. But it’s been a huge source of my anxiety this year.

Etsy is full of AI-generated worksheets. And a lot of them are copies of things I’ve already made. I’ve been on Etsy for almost a decade and I’ve poured so much of myself into my shop. It’s a really weird feeling to scroll through search results and see my ideas made in seconds by someone else.

Social media is full of AI-generated images. How do I compete when it takes me a whole afternoon to do a doodle when AI can create in minutes. And Meta seems to be highlighting those accounts and profiles as well.

My blog traffic has plummeted. When you type a question into Google now, it just gives you an AI summary at the top so you don’t have to click through to a website. Which is convenient! I get it!

It’s scary to feel like you’re being made irrelevant.

And I’m sure that I’m not alone in that fear. And I know, I know, I’m going to tell you what other people tell me – there is a real person behind your words and your art and that’s something that can’t be replicated. Which is true – we are awesome. But still, knowing that your art is real and special doesn’t make those metrics go up, you know?

Again, I’m mostly just writing this so that you don’t feel alone thus I don’t feel alone because all this is really hard and I just want someone to tell me ‘it’s all going to work out and be awesome’ and have my brain actually believe it.

What digital creator anxiety looks like:

I am not going to be embarrassed writing out this list. Yes I do them. But you do them too right?

Checking my stats way more often than I used to
Scrolling through Etsy search results and spiraling
Rage quitting Facebook when an AI post has more engagement than mine
Also rage quitting Facebook when it tries to get me to use AI
Lying awake at night telling myself that maybe I’ll get more sales tomorrow
Feeling guilty every time I take a day off
Wondering if I need to “pivot” (I hate that word)

Why in the world did I think my anxiety was cut out for being a business owner?

I know this post has been a bit doom and gloom but here are some thing I am trying or have tried and will continue to try.

6 self-care tips for digital creator anxiety:

Pause and celebrate where you are. This is the big one for me. I actually heard ‘make the best of where you are’ (it was in a horror movie but we’re ignoring that part) and it really hit me that anxious brain is *futurefuturefuture* and just skipping past the things that are going right. I’ve been trying to really pay attention to one good thing each day. So yeah – write down those wins and try to focus on them for more than 2 seconds before a worry pushes its way in.

Do a social media inventory. I talk about social media inventories a lot because they really do help. If a platform is making your anxieties worse *cough* Facebook*cough* try to set boundaries around your time. Curate your feeds as best as you can, follow other creators and elevate their art too.

Set boundaries around the unhelpful habits. We talk a lot about setting boundaries with other people but sometimes the person you need to set boundaries with is YOU. Check your stats once a week instead of five times a day. No Etsy searching after dinner. No doing math about the future after 9pm.

I was sending out my newsletter at 6am on Mondays. I’d wake up at 8am and immediately check to see if I got sales. The newsletter set the whole tone for my week and that tone was a weekly anxiety attack. I tried different strategies like not checking my phone first thing or trying to give myself pep-talks the minute I woke up or ‘sitting with and breathing through the discomfort’. Eventually I just had to push the newsletter back to later in the morning so it wasn’t the first thing I dealt with after waking up. I hate that I had to do it but it did help.

Be yourself, even when there’s pressure not to be. And also – let yourself rest. You are not a machine (I know we’re competing with them). During one of my ‘omg, I must do more‘, I decided that I needed to do video content. I needed to let people see me talking. Get to know me. So, I set aside time in my day and set up to record several videos – and I hated every minute of it. It was not me. I was trying to be fake and cheery (and honestly that’s a bit how I am in real life because social anxiety makes me mask) and it was overall a terrible experience. Writing is me. It’s the most me-est I am. And I’m not saying don’t try new things but also try to stay genuine to who you are as a person and a creator.

Acknowledge that it’s hard but that you can handle it. The thing that I’ve realized about anxiety in general is that when it gives you a worst-case-scenario it always assumes that you are a damsel-in-distress. It always assumes that you have no options, can make no choices, that there aren’t any forks in the road between now and doom, and that you are so ill-equipped to handle… anything. So yeah, we can acknowledge that it’s hard and it might stay hard but we will handle it. And there will be 10000s of choices between now and whatever our brain is saying might happen.

The big one: sit with the uncertainty.

I don’t know what the creator world is going to look like in 10 years. Nobody does. And that’s really uncomfortable for someone who loves being in control (Hi, anxiety!). But sometimes we have to be able to sit with that uncertainty (working on it!) while also celebrating where we are, what we’ve done, and letting ourselves rest.

Both things can be true. I can be scared about the future and proud of where I am. I can be worried and still have a good day. So this is your reminder (and mine) to try to be in the moment instead of a year from now.

Have you been feeling digital creator anxiety too? How are you taking care of yourself?