Why I decided to not become a creator (in 2022)

I love exploring new terrains—the more playful, the better. That's how "becoming a creator" ended up on my list of goals for 2022. And now, only two months into the new year, I have ditched the idea.

But let me explain more in detail:
In my day job I am an advisor for international students starting their career. I soon realized that trainings and workshop are a powerful way to allow for experience-based education in this realm too. That's why I joined a Train the Trainer course some years ago. Since then, I am using material, like e.g. checklists, mainly created by myself in my trainings.

Another part of my job is networking and teaching how to network which eventually led to the topic of visibility. I got invited to share my experience during conferences and participated in networking events. And then came Working Out Loud.

Working Out Loud is a 12 weeks learning journey during which five people meet once a week and pursue their individual goals while peer coaching each other following a provided agenda (read more on Jon Stepper's Website workingoutloud.com). I joined my first Working Out Loud circle (as part of the #Frauenstaerken movement, loosely translated to "empowering women") in early 2021 and a second one in May of the same year. During this time I started posting regularly on LinkedIn, was invited to a podcast, gave some more presentations which were recorded and started creating blog posts based on my trainings. I enjoyed reusing content on different platforms (my team also started a new Instagram account) and was happy with the feedback.

During the last year, I also joined a group of bootstrappers and sidepreneurs (Wannabe-entrepreneur.com) in which we discussed our goals for 2022. Well, I promised to evaluate whether I would start creating my own content, independently from my day job. And now I know I won't—in 2022.

Why?

1. There is plenty of potential to apply my creative energy on the job, despite the more complex environment, e.g. the need to convince my boss and follow some rules. There is even a need to follow new paths, embrace social media and make sure the services we offer and my expertise become more visible.

2. While Social Media is fun, allows to connect to inspiring people and learn exciting new things, it has a downside: It's challenging for my mental health, consuming time I would want to be with my beloved ones, do physical exercise and be present in the moment.

3. I volunteered to be the president of the local dive club. This is more an administrative position, yet challenging enough for me to create a space where I can get out of my comfort zone and try new things (you see I am really afraid of getting stuck somewhere).

So, what's next?
I am looking forward to apply my learnings to my day job and volunteering and explore the potential within the framework and develop new ideas. For that I am now much better equipped by following inspiring people on IndieHackers and Twitter and having done some experiments—like daily tweets during the #tweet100 challenge, being part of a sidepreneur community where we started creating a product together, recording and editing five episodes of the "4-3-2-1 podcast".

And I am grateful to the creators out there, providing us with content, for investing their time and technical know-how!