Saumirah McWoodson

After I stopped my little 5 or 6-week TikTok experiment of posting 3 times per day, I basically took a break from creating content for TikTok for the following 2 weeks. And, surprisingly, I didn’t feel as great.

It’s not that some addiction wasn’t being satisfied, I don’t think. It felt more like I wasn’t doing the things that make ME feel GREAT: imagining, making, reflecting, working to improve.

During the 2 weeks that I wasn’t creating new content, I suppose I basically became just a consumer of content instead of taking an active part in contributing to the current media world and giving my own spin on what’s currently out there.

So after that short little break, I decided to start creating again. I didn’t feel like it, as I almost never do, but in the moment, it always always ALWAYS feels right and good.

So here’s what I’m currently doing to feed that need to create that’s been building inside me:

• I’m going to focus on BUILDING COMMUNITY again. In 2019, this was my *word of the year,* and I feel like I was actually pretty successful with it. I established some regular social traditions in my life (a monthly brunch that I hosted for a Meetup group and just going to lunch every month with my doctoral program colleagues), and those simple things really fulfilled that 50% extroverted part of me and helped me to not feel so alone in the world. Because, I’ve learned over the years that, for some of us, we can feel lonely even when we have a partner, fur babies, a small business, a job, academic work, and other life obligations. So yeah, I want to start actively working to build community in my personal life again.
• I’m starting some online side hustles (not related to my business, but BOY have I been considering purchasing some things from Alibaba and trying to white label . . . literally just for the thrill of having a new business venture to get off the ground). I’ll focus on trying to make money from them, but I don’t plan to focus so much on building a brand or being able to quit my job from them. I just want to kind of delve more deeply into the parts of myself that make me feel most ME. And, if you’re curious: I want to delve deeper into the worlds of fashion, creating original content WITH OTHERS, and getting out into nature. And I want to do all of those things without breaking the bank. Wish me luck!
• I want to focus on establishing my brand (and creating content for TikTok and IG) WITHOUT feeling the need to educate, simply because I’m a born educator. I want to dwell in the knowing that we DON’T have to monetize everything we are good at (again, for me, that’s education/teaching/writing curriculum), and that it is OKAY to take a different career direction, especially for those of us who are multi-passionate and multi-talented. For the past 2 years, since I stopped running my dance program due to the pandemic, I have felt this low grade, ever present sense of GUILT for not teaching — in person, online, just period. And I want to LET GO OF THAT GUILT so that I can FULLY trust myself to do all the other things that I’m good at! And, for real y’all, I’m REALLY GOOD at A LOT OF THINGS.
• A lot of you really seemed to like the uber specific blogs about what I’ll be doing on TikTok, so here’s that plan for the next week or 2, based on my observations from content I’ve created over the last week:
  • I’m going to try to ONLY create talking videos (not necessarily EDUCATIONAL, just talking . . . kind of about anything that comes to mind, but I’ll try to make it dance-related to stay on brand), pointe videos (and I’ll be comparing how videos perform when I’m wearing my brown pointe shoes vs. when I’m wearing my pink pointe shoes), and tap videos.
  • I’m going to go back to posting at least 3 times per day for the next week (or 2!) and I’ll see if I can occasionally squeeze in 4 times per day, with 3 of the 4 posts being in the evening.
  • I’m going to try to ask more questions in videos. It seems like when I ask a simple question (instead of doing the whole HOOK, BODY, CALL TO ACTION thing that everyone says to do . . .), I get more engagement.

So that’s it for now! Longer letter later.