How to Stay Passionate When Your Hobby Becomes Your Job with Andy Dehnart | Mediavine On Air Episode 49

One of the best things about being a content creator is doing what you love. But at a certain point, we all hit a wall and have to ask ourselves:



How do you stay passionate when your hobby becomes your job?



Digital content creation offers the opportunity to share our passions with the world, which is deeply rewarding, but just like any job it has its pitfalls. Clients don't pay on time; internet trolls leave mean comments; and sometimes, the content you work so hard on barely catches an audience.



Over time it can start to feel like, well, work. Sometimes it feels overwhelming. What should you focus on? What’s the best way to divide your time? How can you tell what’s important and what’s noise?



At the Mediavine Influencers Conference in Austin back in 2019, Andy Dehnart of reality blurred took the stage and tackled this very topic. In this episode of Mediavine On Air you'll hear all about Andy's strategies, techniques, and tools to help you center your focus on what matters most.



Check out the episode below!







Helpful Resources



reality blurredThe Four Tendencies QuizElizabeth Gilbert's FrameworkBird By Bird by Ann Lamott








https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ils2qcpz-J4&t=304s




Transcript



MUSIC PLAYING I just feel so good, good, good. I just feel so good, good, good. I just feel so good.



ANDY DEHNART: Oh, welcome everybody. Thank you so much for coming to this session. I know that the competition is Pinterest, which is basically the-- I don't know. That's tough competition. So thank you all for rejecting--



[LAUGHTER]



--the Pinterest cult for a moment, at least. You can go back to pinning things in the next 45 minutes. But I'm excited to talk to you today about passion in our lives, and how we work the most effectively, and how we can improve on the stuff that trips us up sometimes.



My name is Andy Dehnart. I publish a site called reality blurred. As the title maybe suggests, it's all about reality television. And I've been publishing it since the summer of 2000, so 19 and a half years of blogging now.



That was back in the days before there were blogs. Or we called them web logs-- two words-- as I heard someone say yesterday. And most of them were personal diaries, not really about a subject.



So I've seen this industry change, and grow, and shift over time. And it's been really exciting to be part of it and really, ultimately, a beautiful experience at first to take my passion for reality television, turn that into something that I create myself, that I control. I'm kind of a control freak. So I love to make everything mine and look exactly like I want it to. And it's amazing.



And then also, sometimes, making a little bit of money from it, too, and being able to discover-- and that was in the BM days, before Mediavine was the-- a little bit of money. And then now, obviously, it's become more sustainable and more than just something that can pay for itself. So yeah, all really good, and really exciting. And I think it's such a privilege to be able to do this kind of work and for all of us to be able to share what we care about with the world.



That said, over the 20 years-- probably over the time that you've been doing this, however long that's been-- sometimes the storm clouds come in. Sometimes there is an occasional lightning strike or two. So my goal today is to talk through some strategies, tips, techniques, tools that have helped me weather those storms-- if you'll excuse the cliche-- over those 19 and a half years.



So let's just talk first about the stumbling blocks and then get those out of the way. So these are basically the things that come up over time and that just trip us up. Maybe they're actually weeds that we need to get rid of. Maybe they're actually beautiful flowers that we think are weeds, and we still have to get over the fact that they're not just weeds that we need to pick out. So let's talk about some of those and what they've been, for me,