Speaker A
you don't have to live up to what the internet thinks you are.
L.S. Author reflects on creative hustle, balancing work-life, and the impact of social media on authenticity and self-awareness.
Key Takeaways
- Constant hustle can detach creators from the emotional impact and meaning of their work.
- Taking intentional breaks is crucial for maintaining self-awareness and purpose.
- Social media branding often requires a curated persona that may not fully represent the authentic self.
- Balancing creative work with personal life and other responsibilities is challenging but universal.
- Reflecting on what success means personally helps navigate the pressures of productivity culture.
Summary
- L.S. Author updates viewers on a busy year of publishing and creative projects with Vertos Entertainment.
- Discusses the challenge of maintaining meaning and emotional connection amid constant hustle and deadlines.
- Highlights the importance of stepping back to reflect on personal definitions of success and purpose.
- Shares insights on the pressures of building an online brand and the curated nature of social media personas.
- Explains how optimizing for social media algorithms can conflict with authentic self-expression.
- Describes the personal toll of balancing family, full-time work, and creative ambitions.
- Mentions recent projects including multiple book releases and a Western short film challenge.
- Emphasizes the universal nature of these struggles, encouraging viewers to find their own balance.
- Calls for more self-awareness and intentional pauses to reconnect with the meaning behind work.
- Encourages authenticity despite the demands of marketing and online presence.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
You don't have to live up to whatever image you're trying to create.
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You can just be you, you can be confused, you can be uncertain, you can be in the midst of a journey, because you are.
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I mean, that's what we're doing here.
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Guys, good to see you.
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I have not posted on this channel in a long, long time, I think like February was the last time I was here when Fire on the Tall Grass was coming out and my waterlogged laptop had just occurred, I lost everything.
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That was the last time I was here.
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But I've been very busy in the time since, and that's kind of what I want to talk about.
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There's something in the experience I've had in this year so far, in the last seven months of just, I mean, insane amounts of work that has, it's brought up ideas and concepts and sort of questions and thoughts in my own life that I think are universal and possibly applicable or helpful to you.
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And that's really the reason I started this channel all the way back when it was called Save for More.
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It's the reason I'm a mental health counselor, it's the reason I write the type of books that I write.
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I'm really invested in trying to help others, like I I want to reach out and offer whatever kind of guidance or inspiration, motivation, whatever I can to help grab you and pull you one inch closer to who you're meant to be.
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That's what's on my heart, that's what I want to try to do with my time.
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So yeah, to get there, let me explain kind of what cycle and and path I've been on to give you a quick update for those of you who are like, you've been missing since February.
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And to set up the concept for this helpful, hopefully helpful insight to you.
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My friend Nathaniel Hummel and my friend Casey Moran, we all founded a company Vertos Entertainment this year and we have been really doing a lot for it.
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It's been incredible.
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We at the beginning of the year, I released Fire on the Tall Grass with Vertos and we did like a little book tour.
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Then we had Men's Adventure Fiction May, which saw the release of 10 different books, nine that in that joined in the Men's Adventure Fiction May competition in this contest we were doing where we gave a prize to the to the number one winner.
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We actually gave a prize to the top four winners and then we published the five others that stood out among the rest of the entries.
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And so we published nine books in total and then a 10th book came out in May.
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Nathaniel Hummel, my uh lovely co-host over in the Men's Adventure Fiction podcast, he released his debut and best-selling novel Treasure is My Trade with Vertos in May as well, May 1st.
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And so May was packed with 10 novels from Vertos and uh 11 would be Fire on the Tall Grass at the beginning of the year.
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And now this is the 12th book we've published this year, Gunlaw Bloodlands, this is my Western.
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If you like uh high adventure or high action, I mean, this is the Western for you.
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This was inspired mainly off of the Lone Ranger, like this that was my biggest inspiration was the kind of the serials from the 1940s and such.
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I want this to to read like one of those.
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Um, so yeah, Gunlaw Bloodlands just came out July 1st, this is our 12th book of the year.
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And then on the production side of things, we did a Noir short film festival uh that was in uh I forget when, January, I want to say January.
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And that was smaller, it was a few entries and we just put it on YouTube.
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But then after that, what what just happened was the Vertos Entertainment Western Short Film Challenge and this was big.
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This was a big thing, we had three premiere events across two different states.
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Um, we had a ton of entries, we selected 10 and now they're fighting, or not fighting, but they're all competing right now for the $500 grand prize and a custom belt buckle trophy.
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Um, so that just happened, it's actually the voting's still open if you want to check it out, you can go watch it and vote on your favorite Western short film.
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But Vertos put that on and uh we have a short story collection of Western short films, or I mean Western short stories coming out July 22nd.
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So this is 15 different short stories from 16 different up and coming authors that Vertos is hosting and and publishing July 22nd.
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That's just generally the update and kind of painting the picture about the work cycle I've been in.
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And I've got two kids, I've got a wife, I've got a full-time job, and that's all on top of everything else.
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But this is where it gets universal, this is where you can relate and start to take something away as well.
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Is it doesn't matter if you're doing the same type of thing, productions and and publications and doing exactly what we're doing, it doesn't matter.
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You've been super busy, you've been burning the candle on both ends, you've been in the same position as me where it's like, man, I am exhausted, I'm doing a lot, this is crazy.
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I wanted to just share something that's been cropping up for me, two two important things that I know I need to hit the brakes on and and spend more time with and spend more um contemplation, you know, points with.
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And that is that in this pace, this kind of hustle culture, almost mentality of like getting the next thing done, getting the next um release and and just constantly going, going, going.
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It is necessary in business from time to time and for us to meet our goals, we're going to have to do it certainly, and I understand that and I'm okay with that.
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But it's something that you absolutely have to rein back in, that I have to rein back in because when your nose is to the grindstone like that, when your head is down, you miss the forest for the trees type of thing where I feel like meaning and kind of the emotionality or purpose starts to untether, whether intentionally or not, from the work you're doing.
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At least this is me speaking from my experience, I feel like as we've gone, gone, gone and the pace has been so hectic, it's like I don't have time to really secure a meaning or understanding or conception of what it is I'm after, like what, you know.
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There's difficult questions that are always going to be heavy hitting, difficult questions, no matter what, like the existential ones of, you know, what is success to me, what am I after, what what am I looking for?
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These are big questions that are always difficult, but they're made that much more uh of an impossibility to answer when you just have your head down and you're grinding non-stop and you're just trying to hit, just trying to hit the numbers.
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So that's part one of this is like when you're hustling non-stop, when you're just hitting deadline after deadline and you're pushing so furiously, it really becomes difficult to, I don't know, feel anything with it.
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Like this book just released July 1st and I'm happy with this book, I like this book, I think it's awesome, I think it's a lot of fun, but I didn't feel anything when it released, like I didn't feel even the smallest moment of like, ah, joy, like nothing, like it was, what's next?
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I got to hit the next deadline, I'm I'm deep in the work of 10 other things, it's like, man, that should that doesn't seem right, that seems like something I want to work on.
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So that's that's kind of the first piece here.
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Um, and the second one has to do with social media and kind of persona and if you're doing the thing that I'm doing where you're trying to like market yourself online and and building a brand, right?
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We're all doing it in this day and age, building a brand has detriments to it.
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I try to show up as authentically as I can and I'm not like making some false version of myself online.
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But it is curated, right?
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It is my best foot forward and it is sort of narrowed to be specific to a brand and a uh a type of way that the algorithm picks up on and and agrees with and wants to push out, you know, if that makes sense.
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Like I I'm optimizing myself, this is what I'm realizing is I'm optimizing myself and my my actions and my behaviors toward seeing the numbers go up, seeing the analytics rise.
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And I think that's something I want to caution myself full like pretty hard with, like I want to really take a moment to think about that.
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Because again, it goes back to what is success to you, what is it you're actually after?
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I can't lie that I'm I'm super susceptible like anybody else, like I I want attention from others, I'm susceptible to what people think about me, I want more followers.
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Yeah, unfortunately that's true about me.
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Um, and so when I see those numbers go up, when I see what's successful and I'm trying to like tailor more and more to what is um going to be gaining me the most uh when it comes to analytics, it's like that's my new success indicator, my new marker.
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But it's not even what it, you know, when I really think about it, that's not so meaningful, it's not.
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And I need to remind myself of that, I need to remind myself of what actually is, you know, my intention and what I'm setting out to do.
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And if I if I don't slow down, if I don't take my nose off the grindstone to even have this type of breathing room to think, then I'm just going to get swept up in the hustle culture and the chasing the numbers and the chasing the sales and I'm going to lose whatever passion initially, you know, started me out on this road.
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Getting bit to heck and back by some mosquitoes or something.
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Um, does that make sense?
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And I don't want to lose that, it's like what would happen if I had no readers, if if there was no money involved, what would I be writing, how would I be presenting myself online?
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I need to get closer to that.
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I need to stop the train before it moves too fast and I can't stop it, or I need to move, you know, I need to stop the train before it takes me to a destination I don't want to be on, like I don't want to be there.
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So not to say that, you know, I regret writing anything I've written or I regret the work we've done and, you know, I'm doing something horrible on social media, I'm not.
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I'm not there yet, I think it's just I'm seeing those flashing caution signs.
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I'm seeing the the time to slow down and say, whoa, okay, I've got to I've got to reflect, I've got to think, I've got to reinvest in the true purpose and meaning of of my mission.
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Because if not, dude, I'm telling you, it is easy and I've seen it to get just caught up in the deadline and the egg the uh external validation of everything else and just chasing that.
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And that's my message and that's my hopefully helpful insight to you is that it's okay to take a moment.
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It's okay to let the analytics take a hit.
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It's okay to just um pause and and you don't have to live up to what the the internet thinks you are.
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You don't have to live up to whatever image you're trying to create.
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You can just be you, you can be confused, you can be uncertain, you can be in the midst of a journey, because you are.
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I mean, that's what we're doing here.
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So hopefully that was helpful.
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Go check out Gunlaw Bloodlands.
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I really hope you like it.
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Go watch the Vertos Entertainment short film uh challenge and pick who you think was the best picture so we can give them that $500 and give them that custom belt buckle.
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I'll see you guys soon.
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Maybe not here, but of course at the uh Men's Adventure Fiction podcast, I'm there every single Wednesday, so take care.
Topics:L.S. Authorcreative hustleself-awarenesssocial media brandingauthenticitypublishing updateVertos Entertainmentwork-life balancewriting processmental health
