Money, mental health and global events

Money, mental health and global events

Money, mental health and global events are 100% intertwined for me and at the same time they are very different boxes in my head.

As the saying goes, you can’t separate the art from the artist. But in my opinion, sometimes you have to. For your mental health and because both truths can and should co-exist and here’s why I think that.

Money, mental health and global events

If you’re anything like me, your mental health is affected by money as well as global events – not to speak of all the other external factors. But, in turn, my mental health also affects my money situation. To a lesser extent, my mental health and money situation affects global events.

What I mean by this is, that in any case, my mental health is the root of things being healthy for me. Or not. Currently, things could definitely be better.

Content creator’s guilt

As a content creator, which I am no matter my follower-size, I can’t help but feel an array of conflicting feelings at any given time. These include but are not limited to;

• Feeling like a fraud and that everyone else is better at doing what I do
• Feeling like I love what I contribute with and that I am actually helping people
• Feeling guilt for not posting enough content
• Feeling icky for posting about my products too much
• Feeling stupid for not posting about my products enough

And mostly related to this post; Feeling like a bad human for not sharing my thoughts on current world events, giving my support to causes that need it.

The last one is by far the hardest to grapple with. Even with writing this, I can’t tell you 100% how I feel. I do know however, that I do not appreciate anyone guilting anyone into creating or sharing content of any kind. Even with the best intentions.

Mental health, platforms and shame

I see this a lot like I see either survivors’ guilt or colonial guilt. Essentially not helpful to any cause. Literally no one is helped by you feeling bad about something if it is not followed by action. But this doesn’t mean that anyone has the right to a specific type of action from you. You owe it to absolutely no one, to be explicit about how you show up.

For me personally, I need to keep certain things compartmentalised in order to function as a human being. With everything that’s going on in the world (and that’s a lot), I won’t be of help to anyone, if I let myself feel the weight of all the horrible things happening. There’s a reason I don’t watch news shows, and there shouldn’t be a need to defend that, to protect my mental health.

Even if I happen to have a platform, I’m not under any obligation to use it in a certain way or to convey my views. There’s a time and a place for everything, and honestly, I have better experiences with keeping quiet, listening, signing petitions and spending my time working on communities where my time, efforts and gravitas have real effect.

My platforms are mine and this includes my personal escapism. This doesn’t mean that I’m problematic (or unproblematic) but simply that we (I) still need safe zones, where we can utilize the privilige of thinking of something else.

Because I value beyond anything that I am lucky enough to have those priviliges.

Content creation and current events

I’ve decided that for me to get to a space where I can do the most good for people around me, my communities and to an extent the rest of the world, I will do what makes me happy. No one is better off by me not doing that. And that includes doing work on my blogs. Essentially, my long term goal is to be independent from toxic work culture, help others do that too, contributing to a better life balance for as many as possible. Also, very longterm my partner and I want to create a big community space of off grid living, nature kindergardens and artist spaces etc. It will be epic, but we will only get there if I do the work now.

But for me, I need to keep that separate from my activism however that might look at any given time. In order to not over exhaust my communities of followers and online friends who have also been through a global pandemmy as well as unsettling political events.

(Sometimes I might share something anyway so again, it’s not 100% either/or)

So let’s keep the right fights going!

Support where you can, show up how you can and let others do their thing (as long as it’s not purposefully harmful ofcourse). Just because you don’t see the work, does not mean the work is not being done.

And in case anyone is wondering what I support, I’m happy to tell youif you ask specifics. But I don’t support violations of basic human rights, so let’s start there.

You only have now – use it to do the most good, but not always at the expense of your own health