How Becoming A Content Creator Broke Me: Healing My Need To Be Seen - Part 1
When I was first brought back to Toronto, I knew that it was because I had an underlying brokenness that needed to be healed.
It wasn’t an obvious wound, like a broken bone you could put a cast on, or a bloody gash that needed time to scab and heal over.
It was a deep inner brokenness of the soul that was invisible.
I knew that I had become a content creator at the young age of 21 because I needed to be seen. Because I felt so alone. The loneliness ran so deep that it would compel me to spill my guts into cyberspace, hoping that someone would find them, find me and make me feel less alone.
(I also explore this topic in Episode 8: Healing in Season 1 of Heavenly Minded Earthly Good.)
During my supernatural ‘encounter’ in Montenegro, I had been shown that I was essentially bleeding myself all over the internet and I was disgusting. I was humiliated.
I don’t know how many people can see this, but I’m sure the more intuitive ones can: the impulse to share our lives with total strangers online, in the hopes of getting some likes and comments (aka. validation), can come from profound loneliness and longing for connection that we can’t get in person.
This might not be the case for everyone, and I certainly wouldn’t have admitted it years ago, but now I can.
It’s not our fault. Our relationships are fractured and siloed. Modern distractions and jobs keep us apart. There may be no place where we feel safe to be fully seen and heard, so the internet becomes a place where we can nurse our wounds and seek help. It was for me.
Aside: This is why I think it is extremely psychologically dangerous for young people, especially youth to be building followings online. If they have the right support system around them, parents who re-affirm that they are loved and valuable regardless of their online following, it could be ok. But to reach online for attention can be like playing with fire. Ideally, we would have the love and support we need from people around us.
Why I Started Creating Content Online
For me, personally, looking back at what initially brought me online, I believe it is a mix of destiny and desperation.
I was sad, and lonely and I had what we will call “post-traumatic travel blues.” At age 20, I went to Italy to teach English. I went on my own, but was welcomed by a group of total strangers, my fellow English teachers who came from the USA, Australia and Britain. I lived with host families for 7 weeks and traveled throughout central and northern Italy in that time.
When I came back to Ontario at the end of that summer, my brain had been spliced into two worlds. No one back home really seemed to care to hear about my stories and experience. They were all doing the same old. Yet in Italy I had experienced a level of freedom, hospitality and kindness that made life in Canada unbearable.
I couldn’t handle it. My whole life had just been changed by what I saw and experienced. I needed to tell someone!
Now I would say, I needed a way to integrate that experience.
I needed to go back into that world of travel where people were kinder, more generous, welcoming and real.
So I did.
The following summer, at age 21, the doors opened for me to go to Russia and then East Africa.
That would trip would change me forever.
I believe it wasn’t until age 22, after three summers abroad that I started my blog. I called it “anitacinemedia.com.” I guess I already knew then that I wanted to tell cinematic stories and produce media haha.
It started as a very healthy impulse to share my stories and process my experience, which I now understand as all part of that “integrating” experience.
The Danger of Creating An Online Identity
Over time, my online identity became who I was. My method for attempting to self-heal, was dangerous… because it was also a platform, a way to construct an identity that was like an archetype of me, but not the real me. It didn’t happen all at once, but slowly between age 22 to 26.
I remember these moments tinkering with my website where I would write and re-write my bio. I found solace and meaning in that process of literally constructing myself, because it made me feel understood. For someone with a foot in multiple worlds, creating myself online was like an anchor between my shifting identities.
It didn’t matter that my business school classmates didn’t understand me. I studied in a competitive environment where the talk of the halls was often who was interviewing for what reputable firm. It didn’t matter that they didn’t get me. I “knew” who I was and where I wanted to go - and I had a website to prove it.
As the years went on, and I graduated from university, I found an online course that claimed it would teach me how to build an online business.
I used my own money to take the course - and didn’t look back.
At the height of my social media acclaim, I had 47,000 “followers” on Periscope and 17,000 on Instagram. I was starting to get a few sponsored trips, some free gear and it felt good. It felt like I was “making it.” But it never felt like “this is what I’m supposed to be doing.” I had to constantly wrestle between the kind of good-hearted content creator I wanted to be, and the need to make an income to live.
I didn’t have the conviction and groundedness then to be able to articulate how I really wanted to contribute content to the world. A big part of it was that I was just 24, 25, and I felt this pressure from my parents to make something of myself.
So again, I was fractured, trying to make this new career path work, which meant I needed to make some kind of steady income.
The Weight of The Struggle
I wanted to create content in the world that actually resonated with what I believed the world needed. I believed the world didn’t need another picture-perfected Instagram influencer that just makes people jealous. I wanted to give my content away freely - so I liked Patreon, a platform that allows your followers to give you small portions of money, but there is no guarantee that Patreon will work.
Now that I am describing what I was working through in those years, it was a LOT to try to navigate and hold in my head and heart at 25 years old.
Add to that the stressors and highs of travel, picking up my life and meeting a whole new set of people and living with them for a few weeks or months at a time. No wonder it all fell apart.
In the end, I didn’t have to choose. Life or God or the Universe, Something much bigger stopped me.
I’ve shared previously about what happened in Montenegro that led me to come back to Toronto so I won’t go into details here.
In the next part, I’ll share about how I’ve been wrestling with this question: Do I still want to be a Content Creator? Am I called to be a Content Creator?
