Hunt (transitive verb):

1. To pursue food or in sport.

2. To manage the search for game.

3. To pursue with the intent to capture.

4. To seek out.

5. To drive or chase especially by harrying.

6. To traverse in search of prey.

Hunt (intransitive verb):

1. To take part in a hunt.

2. To attempt to find something.

3. To oscillate alternately to each side (as of a neutral point) or to run alternately faster and slower — used especially of a device or machine.

Hunt (noun):

1. The act, practice or instance of hunting.

2. A group of mounted hunters and their hunting dogs.

Hunter (noun):

1. A person who hunts game.

2. A dog trained or used for hunting.

3. A horse adapted for or used in hunting with hounds.

4. One that searches for something.

5. A pocket watch with a hinged protective cover.

You might be wondering “Why is this guy starting with a bunch of dictionary definitions of ‘hunt’ and ‘hunter’?” Well, these entries found in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary serve more of a purpose than just to annoy you with useless information (or maybe useful? That’s for you to decide).

If you haven’t figured it out by now, my name is Hunter. I’m just a twenty-something guy, trying to figure out who the hell I am.

For as long I can remember, I loved creating. While growing up, I was obsessed with LEGOs — so much so that I had a huge tub stuffed to the brim with them — and I was always trying to find some sort of creative outlet to express my ideas to others: writing, playing musical instruments, cooking and filmmaking. I wasn’t particularly gifted at any of these things but I always had a knack for each one. But two of them stuck with me the longest throughout my life: filmmaking and writing.

I was so passionate about these two arts because I believe this is where I shined the most in my creativity. During the summer before the seventh grade, I wrote an entire fantasy novella that covered over 300 pages front-and-back of a small composite notebook. I taught myself just about every video production software and read every book about independent filmmaking so I could become the next Martin Scorsese. But here I am — not making feature-length films or writing the next Harry Potter. Just a twenty-something guy, trying to figure out who the hell I am.

You may not know this but this will be my third attempt at documenting my life. I first tried starting a blog on the Wix site I used for my journalism portfolio and then I shot two mismatched vlogs on my tiny YouTube channel that was used for nothing more than to be an archive of my video journalism work and to watch funny videos on the internet, of course.

As I began writing this post, I remember back to my time while I was living with my dad back in Salt Lake City. I had just moved back to Utah after spending the first six months of my postgrad in Texas not doing anything near to what I was qualified for with my degree. By this moment in my life, it had been roughly a year-and-a-half since I moved back home and I wasn’t being productive in my life. I worked part-time at the news station I interned with during college and I spent my week just sitting around and doing nothing, or running the occasional errand for family and hanging out with friends. But, it was mainly sitting around and doing nothing.

My dad sat me down and told me to really take a hard look at myself and try to figure out what I’m passionate about and learn how to become something better than a bum. His words weren’t harsh but they were stern and straightforward. And accurate. My depression kept creeping up in ways that I didn’t want it to and I let my work take over my joy of telling stories through words and a camera, and I just wasn’t happy with what I was.

So, I worked hard on myself to the point where I was getting healthy and I was offered an opportunity to work for Fox News in New York City. And then the coronavirus pandemic struck and things stopped. I began to fall into some old and unhealthy habits, and all I did was work and sleep, with some visits with family and friends to try to find some normalcy in the new world.

Now that the world is returning to somewhat normal and that I’m in the greatest city on Earth, I began to think about the one thing that so many people I know keep telling me I should do: start a blog. The problem here is that I don’t really know how to start one.

Well, I mean I do know how to start one but I didn’t know exactly what to discuss. Going back to my heart-to-heart with my dad, when he asked me what it was I was passionate about, I told him that there wasn’t really one thing but I found joy in doing all sorts of stuff. I liked reading, writing, running, listening and playing music, hiking, camping, going to the beach, going to bars and clubs, among other things but there wasn’t just one thing that I could really say that I was passionate about, other than creating.

When I told my dad that I believed that my passion was creating, he asked me to elaborate. I gave him a few examples of when I would take a photo that I really liked while on a photography adventure with my best friend or created a social media graphic for work that I was proud of, it gave me some sense of happiness. He then responded and told me that there was a starting point on finding out what I’m passionate about, which I believed was creating things.

The joy that comes from creating things led me to my first attempts at starting a blog and a vlog. But because I only liked creating the blog and vlog, I ran out of ideas really quickly because I didn’t have a niche. Or the patience. But let’s focus on the niche first.

If you search “how to start a blog (or a vlog)” on Google or your preferred search engine, you’ll notice that one of the top steps in starting one of them is to have a niche. The problem I faced was even though I believed to have found my passion in creating, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to create.

I don’t wear makeup or care a whole lot about my fashion sense, so I couldn’t be a beauty creator. Sure I knew a lot of fun facts but I wasn’t a fan of teaching, so I couldn’t be an educational creator. I was involved with skater culture but I couldn’t ride a skateboard even if I had a gun to my head, so I couldn’t be some e-punk creator (if that’s a thing). So, I felt stuck and stopped.

Then, just a couple of weeks ago, I was spending the day with the first friend I made in New York. During our time together, we got into some deeper conservations about life since he had just gone through a rough chapter in his relationship with his girlfriend and I had been coming out of one of the most intense news cycles any modern journalist has faced, and he was among the latest of the people to tell me that I should start a blog.

“You should start a blog.”

One of the sentences I’ve always heard came back to me for who knows the nth time. So, I decided after that moment that I would take the starting blog/vlog thing a little more seriously and revamp my old journalism portfolio into a more streamlined website to start making a hobby or something more out of my vision to make a blog and vlog.

But I ran into the same problem — I couldn’t find a niche.

I began to look for ideas for niches for my blog and vlog to be the theme of my content but I couldn’t find anything that clicked with me. So, I decided to google “Can you start a blog without a niche?” The short answer is yes, but it’s difficult.

Niche marketing makes it easy for some bloggers and vloggers because it allows them to know who their audience is easily and create content directly for them. The downside to niche marketing is the lack of originality. If you go through all your social media platforms and look at all of your favorite influencers, you might notice a lot of them might be making the same kind of content as the other — even to the point where the titles or imagery shown is nearly identical. That’s the advantage and disadvantage to niche marketing: easy audience targeting but hard originality output.

Meanwhile, non-niche marketing is the exact opposite. While not fitting into a niche, it allows creators to be original and follow the beat to their own drum; however, because their content is so unique to them, it makes it challenging for them to find an audience or following.

Though it may be harder to find an audience with, I kept finding myself leaning toward the non-niche marketing side of content creation because I couldn’t find myself fitting into anything.

Then just a few days before I sat down to start writing the first draft of this blog entry, I remembered a funny family story about my name: Hunter.

According to family lore, before I was born, my mom (who was pregnant with me at the time) was visiting her mom, my Grandma Ginny, and she asked her if she and my dad decided on a name for their son. My mom said that she and my dad decided on the name “Hunter.” And this was how she supposedly replied:

“Hunter? What does he hunt?”

My grandmother’s confused response was the stroke of genius that led me to the theme and title of my series: “What Does He Hunt?”

And that is the question I’m going to try to answer for not only whoever my audience is, but for myself most importantly. What does Hunter hunt?

In this digital expedition, I’m going to utilize these definitions of “hunt” and “hunter” to help guide me into finding who I am and what makes me “Hunter”:

• Definition 1: To seek out.

• Definition 2: To attempt to find something.

• Definition 3: One that searches for something.

Throughout this blog and vlog, I will do my best to write and film consistently so that you can join me on my journey of self-discovery. I hope to find the answer to the question that Grandma Ginny asked so that I could share with you what I hunt; and, I hope that you’ll join me and learn how to “hunt” for yourself along the way.