Over the past weekend, Austin Kleon’s book titled “Keep Going”, called out my obsession over monetizing and online metrics as a means to define my artistic career. I had so many realizations as I was reading and taking down notes, and here are some major key points that I have understood and maybe this should help give you time to reflect on.

The problem with turning our hobbies as side hustles

• Our hobbies are supposed to be our free time to do the activities that soothe us, and that free time has taken away from us.

• They are meant to give us a break and add meaning to our lives.

• Nowadays, they are presented as “potential income streams” or as another way to earn outside our day jobs.

Turning your passion into something that can feed you and clothe you is one of the trickiest parts in stepping into the dangerous territory. It’s taking away the essence of hobby as something that keeps you alive spiritually into something that keeps you up literally instead.

Avoiding the dangerous territory

• A very important note: This isn’t something to discourage you from monetizing your passion.

  • Be mindful about the impact of monetizing your passions in your life.

  • If you jump ship right away without considering your financial constraints and the length of time before you actually get to the point where you are successful, you may find out that it will be something that you will hate soon enough. Until then, you’re better off with settling in a day job to rely on as your primary source of income. (I learned this from Steal Like an Artist)

• Resist the urge to monetize every corner of your creative aspects. Leave some space behind for your sanity’s sake.

• The economy is hard for artists and creatives, so define clearly the lifestyle you want to live.

• Draw the line where you want to do and not want to do for money

• Keep your living within minimum means. Do what you love, but also be mindful of your spending!

Ignore the numbers

• Showing your work online affects your creative pursuits

  • Our work is subject to online metrics 

    • We humans love validation. With the presence of analytics on various social media platforms, we tend to view it regularly whenever we try to post something (or even as simple as constantly checking how many likes and shares we get from a single post)

    • This obsession with online metrics can be in the same degree as obsessing over monetization

• How to prevent online metrics from hogging our creativity

  • Ignore numbers

    • Increase the distance between sharing content and receiving feedback

    • Turn off analytics

    • Benefit: Qualitative measurements remain and they now matter afterwards

      • Do you like it?

      • Is it good?

      • Is it fulfilling?

    • Qualitative measurements is one of the things that online metrics that cannot be measured.

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Quotes to Live By

Featured Artist: Loel Balangauan

Cheers to our first featured artist in this newsletter! Loel is a good friend of mine and a photographer that I look up to. He’s one of my inspirations for photography and he is one of the amazing people who gives back to the community through helping others and initiating events that greatly help other people as well.

About Loel

Loel Balangauan is an artist and an advocate for supporting local talents in Davao City. He took Bachelor of Multimedia Arts at University of Mindanao. He is also known as Loy Portraits in the field of photography and he also co-founded Gratify which is a local clothing brand in the city.

Loel also works as a social media advertiser at Amari Studios and as a multimedia associate at the Philippine Information Agency XI.

Project Highlights

Among his notable projects include a marketing shooting project with Aldevinco Shopping Center which is the oldest shopping center in Davao City. Loel and his team’s photos highlighted the shopping center and promoting the local businesses.

Loel also used his skills and talents to support local business owners during the pandemic aside from Aldevinco Shopping Center. He organized shoots with different Mindanaon products as his way to promote their products and support their businesses amidst the challenges brought by the pandemic.

Aside from his business ventures, he also organized several projects that greatly benefited the community. Through one of his art for a cause project, Project Tabanog, he supported the Indigenous Peoples (IPs) in Mindanao since 2018.

(As of this writing: Project Tabanog - Surigao is organizing an art fair for the local artists in Surigao City. Give the page support and love!)

He has also founded Pasundayag sa Dabaw, a community that provides a platform for local Davaoeño artists to showcase their talents and give back to their community.

His other works are published on different media platforms such as Choose Philippines, Sunstar Davao, Mindanao Times.

Words of Wisdom from Loel

Thank you, Loel! If you want to follow his works, go check out the highlighted links above!

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That’s it for today’s issue. See you next Thursday! Keep on keeping on ;