I quit trying

For my mental health

For the last year, I’ve been putting all my extra time, money, and creativity into a side gig growing on social media my travel account, because I wanted to make it eventually into my full-time job. One year later, I felt pretty proud of my accomplishment when I hit over 5k followers on Instagram, which is a really hard platform to grow on nowadays.

Screenshot captured from the author

As a next move, I started growing on other platforms, not at the same rhythm or with the same outcome, because I’m doing this mainly by myself, and my attention and time can only be spread so far. YouTube was the most recent account, and it’s growing slowly. TikTok, I have zero understanding of it, and I don’t even try.

Some people wonder, as a creator, am I making any money out of it? No. Do I want to? Sure. But I’m not dying for it. I have a full-time job that supports me and my side gig, and for now, this side gig is a creative outlet for me to slowly grow a community of people interested in the same, not to profit from people's misfortune or inability to travel.

Now… I get it. We all need money to survive. Money makes the world go around quite literally, whether you care to immerse yourself in the capitalist mentality or not. But what’s the point of being in a rat race to see who’s gonna be better or richer or more successful, with more views, more followers, and…