Hey there!
The past few weeks I've been visiting cannabis farms, cultivation and processing facilities across Canada 🇨🇦
It's been a crazy few back-to-back trips, but I'm officially back in Toronto and ready to bring back all the mindful consumption and canna content y'all love and know me for.
Photo by Cannabinista
I travelled to an outdoor cannabis regenerative farm in Creemore, Ontario, visited an indoor grow in Nanaimo, BC and checked out a cannabis drinks processing and packaging facility 🌿
All three experiences were incredibly educational and provided an eye-opening experience into all the labour, costs and work that goes into growing the cannabis we consume everyday 🙏🏻
I was blown away by the intricate processes, the planning and organization, and the amount of people it requires to run a cannabis grow/facility, which we often take for granted or don't think about when we're at our local dispensary 🤔
I've documented all the experiences and you'll be seeing them on YouTube and on my Instagram Reels in the upcoming weeks!
Gif made by Cannabinista
Now there's something I've been meaning to share with you all... As part of my newsletter community, I feel like y'all are some of my closest friends 🤣
I feel 100% safe sharing with you all my personal matters, as I think it's important to be truly authentic and honest with y'all.
If this isn't what you signed up for, feel free to unsubscribe… 😖
But this newsletter is all about a tight knit community where we can talk authentically about cannabis and mindful consumption 🤝🏻
Truthfully, I feel like I've been stuck in a rut with Cannabinista and cannabis content creation in general. Let me explain…
🏔️ Current Challenges
- Creating cannabis content is like taking 2 steps forward, and 3 steps back. This is due to the immense censorship across all social platforms.
- When content gets flagged, the overall account performance declines, which creates a negative feedback loop for me and hinders me from wanting to continue.
- I've been adjusting my content for 3 years in order to stay alive on the platform, but truthfully, i'm tired of using code words and saying shit in a cryptic way to avoid getting flagged - it's not authentic to me and doesn't allow me to properly provide education for the community.
- Being a cannabis creator is lonely and I often feel isolated. On top of that, I've been stuck in the city with little to no green space and it's had a severe impact on my mental health.
☄️ The Impact
- The constant battle against censorship has left me burnt out, uninspired, and has created negative self-talk such as “if you were just more creative, you'd be able to still grow your account".
- I've had to change my content so much that I'm never happy with my work and I can't stay consistent with a format. In order to get views, I have to create content that people want, not content that I want to create.
- Said differently, i'm addicted to performance and analytics. If something doesn't perform well, it creates more self doubt internally.
- In addition to the above, I have been battling a slew of health issues including anxiety, depression, dermatitis, severe acne, leaky gut, and insomnia 🤧 there's a bunch of other shit going on in my personal life that I won't share but tldr the mind body and gut connection is so important to balance.
⏭️ The Path Forward
Alot of creators go through burnout and develop unhealthy relationships with their work (ie. seeking validation via metrics and revenue) so I know this is just a moment in time. What gives me hope is that I have a plan:
- I'm going to take some time off to travel, be with nature, and start healing from within, both physically and emotionally.
- I'm going on a 4-week traditional chinese medicine detox to heal my gut, mind, and body. I will be documenting this experience and bringing you along my journey.
- My content is still going to incorporate cannabis, but it will start to evolve into general mindful consumption beyond just cannabis. Cannabis has been one of my most important healing modalities for me, so it's definitely not going anywhere. But in order for me to branch out and not just be a cannabis content creator, I have to branch off my content.
- YouTube and Podcasting – I've said this before and I'll say it again. This is where my energy must go towards. I still have to post on Instagram because truthfully, that's where most of my brand partnerships come from. But my energy is going to go to long form platforms that have less censorship (fingers crossed this lasts). We need long form content to be able to properly talk about the ancient plant.
Photo by Cannabinista
So that's that.
I'm glad I finally told you guys what's been going on behind the scenes.
Despite the smiles on social media, it's just not my day-to-day reality. I truly hope and believe that I can come back even stronger, and most importantly, I need to heal my god damn gut LOL.
I know my physical health is also impacting how I'm feeling about my job and future. It's of utmost importance for me to dial in my physical health so I can at least be at a better mental health baseline.
Thank you all for being part of my healing journey.
I truly hope you get value from this newsletter and that it inspires you in one way or another.
On a more positive note, you'll see a few more newsletters coming from me in the next few days as I have another vaporizer giveaway to announce and a new launch I've been working on this past year 👀
As always, you can submit questions or topic requests to me by emailing me at anna@cannabinista.co. I respond to every email and DM, and I always value your feedback and ideas! Stay tuned for more next week, my friend! As always, start low and go slow!
