Guilt as a disabled content creator

I thought we would chat about guilt as a disabled content creator in the hopes of helping you understand how it feels to be trying to raise awareness.

You see I have been creating content and raising awareness for about twenty years now, mostly on blogs or places like Tumblr and Live Journal where I started out. Back then it was more of a way to get my feelings out and to try to cope with being newly disabled.

As I grew in confidence, I moved over to a website I built myself and then over to a WordPress site where we have been ever since. Then about five years ago I made my first YouTube video and I’ve been making disability videos there ever since, though most of my content now is witchcraft and vintage fashion.

I am also on social media of course, but that is just to help people find me on here and my YouTube channel. But that content is something you have to do daily really and posing for pictures, editing and thinking what to write, as well as Twitter posts and videos all take a lot of energy.

While writing about all these things I do I realise what a lot of work is involved in it, how much of my days are spent on doing it all. And yet, if I cannot do it because of fatigue or pain, I feel guilty because I know these platforms demand consistency.

I also struggle knowing that the people who watch my videos and read my blogs will want to see things from me. My audiences cannot grow if my content is not being put out and because I miss content on YouTube my watch time is down which is why I am still not at a point where I can monetise my content.

The internalised ableism is screaming at me that I am useless and shouldn’t even bother, that I let people down and that guilt makes me feel worse on days when I cannot get content out. The guilt as a disabled content creator seems to make my bad days worse and I struggle every month looking back on the days I missed.

Yesterday I got my diary out as usual and I planned out the coming months content, and while I did, I looked back at the videos that did not get made. They are good ideas that will be moved to this month, but I still feel sad knowing that there are more ideas that will have to wait because of this.

The guilt never ends, constantly poking at me, telling me I will only let people and myself down again as the month of November moves forwards. I find myself wishing I could make the sort of content that I enjoy watching, beautiful camera work, amazing sewing and crafts, days out, and haul videos.

See I watch those things because I cannot do them, isn’t it the way that we watch what we cannot experience ourselves? But I still find myself wondering why anyone reads my blog or watches my videos when I cannot do the things I want to do.

Anyway, I hope these thoughts help you to understand the guilt as a disabled content creator, and to see that we do what we can when we can. Leave us comments and watch as much as you can so we know you understand.

Thank you xx

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