Where have I been?
It’s been almost 2 years since my TikToks went viral, and I’ve been laying pretty low since then. I wanted to write this blog post in so many different ways – sometimes factual and to the point, other times, incredibly emotional and vulnerable. Right now I’m trying to get something in between - candid, honest and hopeful.
Who am I?
If you’re reading this and don’t know who I am, my name is Deb! I’m (currently) an art director, and I have worked in the design industry for the past 8 years. Back in 2020, I quit my job to pursue my side hustle full-time just a couple months before COVID hit. My side hustle became one of the many victims of the pandemic, and with an incredible amount of time on my hands, I spent my days playing hours of Animal Crossing, making TikToks, and trying to find work while everyone else was scrambling to save their own businesses.
I started out making TikToks of my drawings, and after gaining 700 followers in a week, I posted my first productivity video; a video about my Timeblock Planner. It went viral, and a week later, my Expense Tracker video went viral too. Since then, I’ve received thousands of comments and hundreds of DMs about them; I sold my Timeblock planners on Amazon, and made tutorials on YouTube about my Expense Tracker. And because of my viral TikToks, I was picked to host Mamamia’s new podcast 8 Minutes to Change Your (Work) Life (which is back for its second season!)
But then what happened?
Well simply put… I got burnt out (creatively, emotionally… everything). I was going through major lifestyle changes at the time (stepping away from my side business, adjusting to a new job, and moving into my first big girl apartment). And while those changes were positive, they disrupted every routine I’d ever built for myself and I was feeling incredibly frazzled. Sydney also went through its longest lockdown since the pandemic started, and I found myself feeling lost, demoralised and exhausted. I stopped making original TikTok content, and even though I was on social media every day, I couldn’t find the motivation to put myself out there anymore.
My impostor syndrome got worse (than usual)
During this time, my impostor syndrome skyrocketed. I never felt like I truly deserved any of this credit or success, that everything I did was a complete fluke and I was lucky to even get noticed. This was only reinforced by the poor views my TikToks got after my first 2 went viral. My next TikToks would barely get 1000 views, and I took that as a personal failure every time. And while I love productivity (I love reading self-help books and discovering new tools to get shit done), I started to question whether or not I was even qualified to be considered a ‘productivity queen’ as people claimed I was. I didn’t have all the answers (and still don’t), and I felt like fully embracing the ‘productivity queen’ persona would be a complete lie.
All I could think about was performance
As my TikTok grew, all I did was obsess over the numbers. I woke up every morning to check whether I had new comments, new views or new followers across all my platforms. At the time, I started working at a performance marketing agency, where their main goal was to get higher click-through rates (CTRs) and sales for their clients (as a performance marketing agency should). Every piece of design work I did was to get a sale, and if it didn’t get a sale, the design work that I spent hours on would get cut the next day.
Going through this process several times a week took its toll on me. While it was important to keep digital ads new, fresh and reactive to data, I wasn’t used to my design work being so transient. Eventually I stopped thinking about creativity and attention to detail, and started only caring about the bottom line. It didn’t matter about quality or making something meaningful, if no one saw it, or engaged with it, why bother? The work was worthless.
This mindset only exacerbated my anxiety when it came to my personal work and TikTok content. All I could think about was the potential hours I would waste if the next TikTok I made didn’t go viral or hit at least 10,000 views. What was the point of making anything if no one would see it? My passion for creating disappeared completely as a result.
I became afraid of failure AND success at the same time.
Being afraid of failure is normal. It’s the reason why we don’t start projects or follow our true passions. There’s always a nagging part of our brain that tells itself - if you don’t get this right then you’ll look really stupid. A lot of people experience this, and I still feel this every day. Once I gained 100k followers, it exacerbated my fear of failure by a thousand per cent.
And while that was happening, my fear of success grew too. Fear of success is such a weird concept - why would I ever be afraid of succeeding? In this instance, success meant more work for me - more work that I wasn’t ready to take on at the time. I had just stepped away from my side hustle business, which had negatively affected my love of design. TikTok was a hobby that was beginning to invigorate my creativity, and I wasn’t quite ready to push my TikTok into business mode because I only just started to enjoy designing again.
So the prospect of TikTok turning from hobby to a new business was frankly… really scary. I was getting comments and DMs about developing an app, selling my physical planners, and creating a whole productivity empire out of it. These messages were all encouraging, positive (and incredibly heartwarming), but I couldn’t help but feel an enormous sense of responsibility to capitalise on this success. If I didn’t capitalise on it, it would be such a waste! And because of the pressure I had put on myself, I felt myself becoming less inspired every day..
I woke up feeling dread every morning
For over a year, I woke up every morning dreading the day ahead. I felt suffocated by my own expectations, my head would be spinning with all the possibilities of success or failure. If I made a decision, that could change everything. My brain scoured every future decision and every future outcome, the good and the bad, until I decided that it was actually safer to do nothing at all. And when I finished the day having not achieved anything, I’d feel guilty about wasting the last 24 hours. I’d find myself falling asleep early from exhaustion, and the process would continue again and again every day for the rest of the year.
I was trying to be everything, everywhere, all at once
When opportunities come knocking at my door, I’m always the first one to embrace it, even if it's scary and challenging. I have a tendency to want to do everything at the same time, and this felt like the opportune moment to throw as much at the wall as possible. I thought, maybe I could start drawing again, do livestreams, make a productivity and design series, make new organisation tools, talk about my favourite books… the list was endless.
Of course, when you have so many ideas all happening at the same time, the good ol’ paradox of choice kicks in. What should I do first? If I have to choose between two ideas, what if the idea I picked doesn’t work out? As the paths of opportunity grew, so did my anxiety. Instead of chipping away at a project one step at a time, I tried to tackle everything head on and complete it as quickly as possible, forgetting the process of making and learning was the fun part.
My perfectionism stopped me from doing the simplest things
Perfectionism is pretty hard to let go of, it’s both a blessing and a curse. My perfectionism has helped me a lot. It’s the reason why I am the way I am, I’m always pushing myself to be the best I can be, and having great attention to detail is so important for a designer.
However, my perfectionism started to work against me - I didn’t want to show my progress because it was ‘never ready’. I didn’t want to post anything on my Instagram because I hadn’t figured out what ‘my aesthetic was’ and I wanted to make sure my content was beautiful and consistent from the start. This stopped me from posting anything. If one part of the project wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t going to post anything at all. This was a daily battle and stopped me from starting and completing projects altogether.
People started copying my work and taking credit for it
They say imitation is the best form of flattery - and it’s true. If you don’t inspire knockoffs of your product, it probably means your product wasn’t very good in the first place. As I’m typing this right now, there are several Timeblock Planner knockoffs on Amazon making sales off a design I spent years trialing and perfecting. Seeing so many knockoffs (even a TikTok that copied my original video as well) was incredibly disheartening at the time, and I wondered to myself - why make anything when someone else can swoop in and copy it the next day?
All my followers were on high alert, calling out creators for taking credit for my Expense Tracker and Timeblock Planner. I was (and still am) super thankful to everyone who spent the time correctly crediting me, remembering who I was even though I wasn’t as active on TikTok anymore.
After a while, it became so normal to see a knockoff on Amazon, that I started to accept it as a positive. Having several knockoffs meant that people found it valuable, and I used this as proof in my job interviews that I was an effective and thoughtful designer (so not a waste after all!). On a personal level, I resolved to build content that was more unique to me so I’d have more ownership over the work I did.
I lost my sense of direction and my sense of self
2021 felt like the “Opposite Year” - everything I did felt weird and backwards. For the first time in my life, my perfectionism wasn’t helping me, it was harming me; everytime I put in subpar work hoping for criticism, I was praised for it instead; every time I posted something I didn’t care much about, it got more views than something I did care about. I stopped enjoying the things I used to enjoy, even watching a TV show felt like a job when it used to relax me. Nothing felt the same as it did before.
I started to question if everything I did up to that point was wrong, should I NOT care about the work I do? Being stuck inside for 6 months during Sydney’s lockdown also took its toll. I was living, sleeping and working in the same room for hours on end, and the lines between my recreational and work time started to get blurry. I felt like I was working all the time but getting nothing done, and I felt like I was resting all the time, but still feeling restless.
I wasn’t feeling particularly motivated either, and my sense of self started to falter. I was starting to question myself, my goals, my habits, everything. I didn’t feel like I was able to bounce back like I used to. I started to accept that maybe this confusing feeling was simply a part of my life now.
Okay so this got super bleak, how did I snap out of this?
The short answer is, I moved on. I moved on from work, interpersonal relationships and projects that didn’t fit me. I let go of my obligations, and accepted that if something was important enough, it would find its way back to me. I rebuilt and reestablished things that were positive, and went back to my roots – the things I knew to be true about myself. I was always scared that ‘reverting back my old ways’ meant I was going backwards, but now I realise that I was just finding my way back to myself again after getting lost for a little while.
Solution: I set standards for myself and my life
Instead of compromising my needs and values, I wrote a list of standards I couldn’t lower for any job, project or person. Standards are different for everyone, but here are mine:
For work:
The work needs to feel substantial and valuable in some way
I want to work with big clients
I want to work with a team that inspires me outside of work
I want a team that will keep me at a high standard
I want to be challenged
I don’t want to be the smartest person in the room
For projects
I want it to feel authentic
I want it to be a work-in-progress
I want it to be humble, fun and joyful
I want it to be useful and helpful
I want to be able to drop it and revisit it any time I want
For people:
I want to surround myself with people who are open, thoughtful, intelligent, funny and creative
I want to be inspired by the people around me, and feel like I can be my most authentic self without judgement
I want to learn from other people’s enriching life experiences
I DON’T want be near people who are dishonest, ignorant, sexist, racist, discriminatory or have outdated views
Ever since I’ve set a ‘vibe check’ with these standards, I’ve found my quality of life has increased significantly.
Solution: I would sit and observe my anxiety
When I had anxiety, my brain would go haywire and try to solve it as quickly as possible. It would ruminate, go over situations again and again, and fixate on tiny details that were insignificant. A method that I taught myself was to sit in a room with my anxious thoughts and observe them. If the feelings were new, I wouldn’t pass judgement, or even try to explain or rationalise them.
I’d let the feelings pass and accept them as they are. If they came back for the second time, I would sit near them and pin point parts that felt more significant than others. I would analyse them. Did someone say something that triggered these feelings? Is it a pattern? Why am I feeling these now? If the feelings came up 2-3 more times, I would write down the main pain point. From that, I would make a list of potential solutions and action them if needed.
Thankfully, I don’t experience anxiety now in the way I did before, but any time new anxious thoughts come up, I use this method and it keeps my mind at ease (and it really works!)
Solution: I started to accept my life as it was
Staying content in life is a balancing act of acceptance, growth and a healthy amount of criticism. There are things I’ve come to accept which have made my life so much healthier:
Things will happen at the time that they need to. You are not running behind, you don’t need to follow a made up timeline in your head.
You have to live your life to evolve as a person, theory is all well and good, but putting your life into practice is the only way to figure out what works and what doesn’t
Important things will always resurface, even if you put it to the side for while
Projects happen one step at a time, things will pivot naturally and you’ll find your creativity grow in ways you could’ve never planned
There is no such thing as wasted time, do not feel guilty about resting
So was there a happy ending?
Yes! 2021 was a rough year for sure, and even with the deep inner conflict I had with myself, I still left the year with a lot of positive outcomes. I got my first car (and overcame my driving anxiety somewhat haha), I moved out of home into my first apartment, I got my dream job at Google, I started my own podcast with Mamamia, and I learned a great deal about myself. 2021 only reconfirmed how important my relationships were - how lucky I was to be around people who are smart, funny and inspiring.
Even though life can feel quite bleak at times, I’m gonna end this blog with my favourite cheesy quote: “An arrow can only be shot by pulling it backward. So when life is dragging you back with difficulties, it means that it’s going to launch you into something great. So just focus, and keep aiming.”