Last week, we hosted a webinar with the Jed Foundation on creator mental health and burnout, and one moment from the conversation has stuck with me.

Courtney Knowles, the Jed Foundation's senior media advisor, talked about the tension creators feel when hard things are happening in the world and their content doesn't directly address it. If you typically post travel content but immigration enforcement raids are dominating the news, you might feel conflicted about posting your next destination guide. Knowles' advice: Name the tension. Acknowledge to your audience that these issues are at the top of your mind, and that while it may feel like an odd time to think about your next vacation, there is power in joy—particularly for marginalized communities and communities under threat. You can be committed to making your platform a place where both can exist.

That reframe stuck with me because it gets at something creators do better than almost anyone: recognize how complicated and nuanced we all are. We can care deeply about many things at once. We can read the news and still have to pick out snacks for soccer practice. Dreaming about our next vacation doesn't make us bad people—in fact, it can bolster our mental health so that we can take on the issues that matter most to us.

Knowles also drove home the importance of knowing your mission as a creator. When a new request or opportunity comes in, he recommends turning everything off for a second, sitting in your intention, and asking whether it aligns with your purpose. "This is a trap I fall into a lot because there are so many opportunities to do good," he said. It's a disservice to your mission when you say yes to things you don't have the bandwidth to carry or that don't clearly fit in that bucket.

I recently saw Adriana Goblirsch's series for tired moms on how to get involved in a sustainable way, and in the first video she says to pick one thing to care about. We don't have to be experts in everything going on. That's one of the beauties of society—we can divide and conquer. And that works for creators, too. If you know a creator who is more knowledgeable on a topic, repost their work. Send your audience to their content. Conserve your brain energy on what makes your work uniquely valuable.

NCC’s Maya Srikrishnan wrote up the full webinar with all of Knowles' grounding techniques and strategies—including the 5-4-3-2-1 method, how to handle DMs from followers in distress, and the Jed Foundation's Digital Storytelling Guide. Read the full piece here.

News Creator Corps and OpenSecrets are hosting a webinar for creators on how to find, analyze, and share campaign finance data. By the time Election Day arrives, billions of dollars will have been spent - but where exactly is it coming from? Following the trail through PACs, super PACs, political parties and campaigns can feel like an impossible maze. In this session, OpenSecrets shows you how to crack the code. We’ll give you the practical skills needed to turn complex campaign finance data into the content your audience demands. We’ll cover essential finance laws, FEC document navigation, and introduce brand-new OpenSecrets tools built to break down candidates and individual races. Don't just report on the election - uncover who is funding it.